


The Will to Continue

by Ihc



Category: Ori and the Blind Forest
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Adorable Ori, Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Canon Rewrite, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Trauma, Competent Moki, During Canon, Emetophobia, Family, Gen, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Moki, Protective Siblings, Spoiler Ori Dies (Repeatedly), Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt, Temporary Character Death, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:29:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 42
Words: 156,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23869474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ihc/pseuds/Ihc
Summary: When the storm struck, Ori and Ku were thrown into a desperate struggle to survive. Lost and alone in a strange, hostile world, it will take everything they have to find each other, let alone a way back home. And ancient forces with other plans for the spirit and owlet are stirring...The sequel to 100 Themes of the Blind Forest. Follows the story of Will of the Wisps as Ori and Ku search for each other, a way home, and the answers to a growing mystery about Niwen's past.Rated T for violence and graphic depiction of injury.
Relationships: Ori & Ku
Comments: 356
Kudos: 111





	1. Prologue

_All things have an end, and all things have a beginning. Even Light itself. There was a time long, long ago, before Nibel was called Nibel, before the Spirit Tree first took root. I shall always remember the two brave spirits who set off into the unknown as the light they knew faded to nothing._

Eki winced as he unwrapped the makeshift bandages from his hooves. They came away bloody. He could run faster than any other spirit in the forest, but his hooves were meant for the forest: for the soft, springy earth, for scrambling up tree trunks and over fallen logs and smooth, ancient boulders covered in moss and lichen. The nails were cracked, and the pads blistered and torn and cut, from sharp, jagged rocks and blistering hot sand. His sister, Sol, had found a few herbs that at least numbed the burning, but they didn’t help for long, not when he had to keep walking, keep running, keep climbing. The comforting embrace of his parent’s light was far, far behind him, and the healing plants he was familiar with back home didn’t grow out here. Maybe they would someday, from the little pouch of seeds he carried with him, but now all he could do was hope his body wouldn’t give out.

Sol gave him a sympathetic look. She sighed, and rested her head against the rock wall behind her. It lolled to one side, and she blinked slowly. She wasn’t in any better shape than him. Maybe her hooves were, because she wasn’t the one climbing up treacherous outcrops or running ahead to scout out the unfamiliar land, but the journey had taken its toll on her too. Her power was better suited to fighting off monsters, and they’d had to do a lot of that the past few days. No, it was longer than that wasn’t it, almost a full cycle of the moon? Back in the old forest the creatures of decay had been slowly taking over for a long time. Those were bad enough. But out here there were creatures that _hunted_ spirits, that were drawn to their light.

It was better now than in the desert, where there was no cover for miles around. They couldn’t avoid the hoof-blistering heat of the day, because traveling by night was too dangerous. Now there wasn’t much heat _to_ avoid, and it was impossible to see far. The night was pitch black outside the small alcove in the rocks where they were sheltering. The only light was the soft glow of their bodies, and of the small orb of light that traveled with them. It was enough to make out a small tree a couple Dash ranges away, but beyond that it was swallowed up by the driving rain.

Eki would almost have taken the desert over this. There was no _real_ shelter from the swirling winds that tore along this maze of narrow gorges. Even with the cliff face overhanging them, a gust going a different direction periodically sprayed them with freezing cold rain. The two young spirits were both soaked to the skin and shivering violently. A pathetic stack of damp branches sat between them. It was too wet to start a fire, even with Sol’s _Light Burst_.

He just wanted to go home. But he couldn’t go back. If there was even still a forest left to go home to, if there was even a Spirit Tree, there wouldn’t be for long. Before long his parent, and the Light of the old forest, and all the other spirits, would be gone. Some of them already were. Too many of them. The decay had won. All he and Sol had left was each other, the burden of a faint hope for the future, and the Light of a forest that didn’t exist yet. If it ever would.

“Sein?” Eki asked, just loud enough to be heard over the wind and rain. “How much farther do you think it’ll be?”

The tiny ball of light flickered. “I wish I knew, little one, I really do.”

“ _Is_ there a place out there?” Sol said with a hint of bitterness. “Or are you crazy too and you’re going to lead us off the edge of the world?”

“I think we went off the edge a long time ago,” said Sein. Eki attempted to flick water out of his ears. If by some miracle they survived and lived a thousand years, he’d still never get used to the idea of her having a sense of _humor_. “This storm is a good sign.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have a body.” Eki tried to keep his teeth from chattering.

“The rains must stop at these mountains and never reach the desert,” Sein continued. “The lands beyond might well be lush and green -”

“And rainy,” complained Sol. “I’m sorry we ever came this way. We should’ve stayed at the place in the desert with water.”

“It was too small.” Eki was too tired to get into an argument with her. He knew she was just tired and hungry and lost too, and just wanted something to be right about. But that place was just a little pond, enough water to support grasses and bushes and a few small fruit trees. It wasn’t enough.

“Whatever,” huffed Sol. Then she snorted, smiled, and shook her head. “I bet Gin would love it here.” She closed her eyes with a pained expression. “Would’ve loved it here.”

“Yeah...” Eki flinched as another gust showered him with icy water. “And we’d probably want to kill him for it.”

“Don’t joke about that.” Sol’s voice was like the weather. Dark, cold, biting. “Ever.”

“Sorry.” Eki stared out into the rain, imagining the missing member of the group of three spirits who should have set out on this journey laughing and skipping around in the freezing rain. “I miss him too. I just...” Just even though really it was so cold and windy that even Gin would’ve been miserable, he’d have tried to lighten the mood, and driven Eki and Sol crazy because they just wanted to sleep and hope they weren’t frozen solid by morning. “Never mind.”

He swept the attempt at a fire away with this tail and crawled closer to his sister. She reached out and hugged Sein against her chest, and rested her head against Eki’s shoulder.

“We should’ve left sooner,” she mumbled. “If we’d gone when we had the chance -”

“You shouldn’t have had to make this journey so young at all,” said Sein. “None of this _should_ have happened this way. But please don’t blame yourselves. None of this is your fault.”

“I know. I just… I want our brother back...”

“I know,” Sein said softly. “What Gin did was very brave, but he should never have been allowed to do it. No one should.” She paused for a while. Eki embraced his sister, and together they started to give into exhaustion, their breathing slowing. He could feel Sein’s light, the same nurturing light he’d known all his life, but it was so faint, like the sun through thick clouds.

She spoke again. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll keep watch for danger. Hopefully the storm breaks by morning, and we can leave this place of sorrow behind us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, I’ve missed writing for this fandom. It feels good to be back! I expected Will of the Wisps to give me a ton of fanfic inspiration, but this game blew my expectations out of the water… and tore my heart in half with the ending to the point where I feel like I have to write a fic to get emotional closure.
> 
> This fic is going to be a little different than 100 Themes of the Blind Forest in terms of format. I’m most likely not going to do a complete novelization of the game, but chapters will be in more or less chronological order instead of scattered over the game’s timeline. Will of the Wisps has a more complex story and there are more areas where I want to either diverge from or expand on it, so I think I’ll probably have more “canon scene plays out differently” scenes.
> 
> But before getting to Ori’s journey, here’s a quick look back in time at Eki and Sol’s. Based on Sein saying they played with Naru “when the Spirit Tree was just a sprout,” I’ve always thought they were either some of the first spirits born to Nibel’s Spirit Tree, or were the children of the tree before the one we know.
> 
> If it wasn’t obvious: this is Sorrow Pass, and it’s the reason it’s called Sorrow Pass. This was Eki and Sol’s darkest hour before the dawn, before they discovered the land that would one day become Nibel. They were also responsible for naming the Ginso Tree a long time later.
> 
> Some of the chapters will have a little snippet of opening narration like this one. Which character they're by will vary. This time, it's Sein.
> 
> This chapter's shoutout goes to Fandom Games on YouTube! Their Honest Game Trailer for Will of the Wisps had me laughing out loud, and it's actually honest with a humorous slant instead of being mean-spirited. And most importantly, it gave me the inspiration for this fic's title! The video said it as a joke, but it sums up the story's themes really, really well.


	2. We Named her Ku

_Ku was always curious. Ever since she could talk she was asking questions, but I didn’t always know the answers._

  
  


“Ori?”

“Mmmpph...”

“Ori?”

“I’m… sleeping… ow!”

Ori was awoken by a small beak nipping at his ear. He groaned, stretching and rubbing his eyes. When he saw the enormous pair of orange ones staring into his, his body went rigid. He jolted back, hitting his head on the wall of the cave behind him. _Calm down_ , he told himself.

Ori had been nervous around owls ever since… ever since Kuro. He knew it was ridiculous, but whenever he heard their calls, or saw one perched on a branch at dusk, his pulse would quicken, and he’d catch himself looking around for cover. For a long time, until Ku hatched, he’d worried that he’d be scared of the owlet too. And in a way, he was, but not because she reminded him of her mother. She’d startled him just now, but any creature waking him up suddenly was like that. Even Naru. At least, now.

He was scared because Ku reminded him of her siblings, the ones he’d only seen in a vision, a fragment of memory from touching her eggshell. The ones he’d seen burned to death, he’d _felt_ burned to death, by the Spirit Tree’s light. As soon as Ku was born, and Ori saw how small and _fragile_ she was, he was scared that he’d hurt her. He only had the dream a few times, the one where she’d wake him up and scare him and he’d lash out with Spirit Flame or Charge Flame or even Light Burst, and it would be just like the countless times he’d burned Corruptions into smoldering husks, and then he’d wake up for real with her fast asleep next to him. But the memory of the dreams came back for a long time, when he was lying awake at night.

“What is it, Ku?” he asked.

“What was Mom like?”

“Huh?”

Ku tapped the moss-covered boulder beside the nest they shared with her wing. Ori couldn’t see the pictures from there, but he knew immediately who she meant.

He sighed. “She… she loved you very much, Ku.”

“I know, but… what was she _like?_ You met her, didn’t you?”

“I...” Ori stared into those curious orange eyes that seemed a little too old for their owner. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

How was he supposed to answer that question? He couldn’t remember ever being this curious about the Spirit Tree. But then, the Spirit Tree had been alive. They’d told Ku a little bit about her mother, once she was old enough to ask. But only the simplest things, the things that wouldn’t hurt her. Ori didn’t want to lie to his sister, but how could he tell her the truth? How could he tell her about the fear he’d felt when he looked into Kuro’s burning white eyes, about the tumult of rage and hatred and grief that had radiated off her. How could he tell her what he’d seen at the nest, or what the Spirit Tree and Fil’s Ancestral Tree had shown him?

“I just don’t,” Ori said. But the disappointed look in Ku’s eyes made him continue. “I met her, but I didn’t know her.”

“Ori, I know you’re keeping something secret. What is it? Why can’t I know?” Her eyes narrowed. There was hurt in them, and in the gentle darkness around her. Ori couldn’t meet her gaze. How could he lie to her? She deserved to know, but how could he tell her?

“Ku… your mother… well, she made some really big mistakes.” Ori chose every word carefully. “So did the Spirit Tree.” It still felt weird for him to call the Tree his father. “There was… there was an accident. He was careless with his light, and your brothers and sisters died.” _Looking for me_ , Ori thought. The feeling that he was somehow responsible for what had happened had never quite gone away, not completely. “Kuro blamed him, and Sein, and… I don’t think she was wrong, because even if it was an accident it was still their fault, but… she tried to put the light out forever.”

“Huh?” Ku looked almost betrayed. “But… isn’t the light going out why Nibel decayed?”

Ori winced. This was why he didn’t want to tell her. She put things together too easily, figured out more of the painful things than he was trying to expose her to. He already regretted telling her anything at all, but he knew she wouldn’t go back to bed now. He nodded solemnly. “Yes.”

“Then she… tried to stop you?...”

“From bringing it back. Yeah.”

The little owlet’s eyes shimmered with tears. Ori mentally kicked himself. Why couldn’t he have just said he’d tell her in the morning? Maybe then he’d at least have had time to _think_ before he opened his mouth. All he was doing was upsetting her. “Ku, I’m sorry. It’s… I don’t think this is a good idea to talk about right now.”

“ _Now,_ or ever?”

“Ku...”

“Nobody ever tells me anything about before I was born, unless it’s a _really_ long time ago! Not you, or Naru, or even Uncle Gumo!” Ku glared and fluffed her feathers. Ori looked over at the snoring tangle of spidery limbs sprawled on the platform near the back of the cave. Part of him was tempted to wake him, or Naru. But what could either of them tell Ku that he couldn’t? “Why? She was my mother, I should be allowed to know!”

“Ku, I’m sorry. I… I can’t tell you anything because I only knew Kuro as an enemy,” Ori said. He laid a hand on the owlet’s shoulder. “I knew she was hurt inside, but… she was too strong. All I could do was hide, and run from her. I don’t think I ever saw the real her. That’s why I don’t know.”

“So when you said she loved me...”

“No, that’s the only thing I do know. I know she was trying to protect you, even if the way she did it was bad. And… I know she gave her life for you, because… because that was the only way to fix things.”

“Oh.” Ku’s voice became very small, and her feathers lay flat again. She leaned forward and pressed her forehead against Ori, and lay down again, practically dragging him with her. For a long time, neither of them said anything. “What happened?”

“That’s a really long story, Ku. And it’s the middle of the night. And...” He swallowed hard. “Ku, I’m just afraid of saying something that’ll give you nightmares.”

“I’m not a baby. I’m not gonna be scared of a story.”

“I know you’re not, Ku. But it isn’t just a story. It’s...” He didn’t know the right words to say it. It was a story, but Ori didn’t know what it would be like to hear it, because he’d never heard one anything like it. All he knew was what it was like to live through, and _that_ he’d do anything to protect his little sister from. “Look, in the morning we can go down to the Spirit Well in the Sunken Glades, and ask Sein about it. She’s a better storyteller than I am.” Technically the one in Lost Grove was closer, just across a few lakes. But Ori had never told Naru he’d found that one. And that place had a long story of its own, one he only knew tiny pieces of and that wasn’t his to tell.

“Okay.” That seemed to satisfy Ku. She settled down and snuggled up against him. Ori closed his eyes, and the noise of the night insects outside soon lulled him to the edge of sleep.

“Ori?” Came a whisper. “Why is Sein on the wall, but the Spirit Tree isn’t?”

“Go to sleep, Ku.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now we’re into the story proper! I finally get to to write Ku! And of course to return to Ori after… wow, it’s been almost two years now since I’ve written him.
> 
> Ori’s nightmares are inspired by reality. Some of the earliest dreams I can remember are from when I was about 4 years old and my little sister was a baby, and I had recurring nightmares about accidentally hurting or killing her. I was… kind of a screwed-up kid. But not nearly as screwed up as Ori is by now.
> 
> Shoutout to StrawberryAeris, who drew an awesome comic with a more humorous take on a similar scenario to this chapter! That can be found on Reddit at the URL below, and they're also on here, Tumblr, and Twitter. https://www.reddit.com/r/OriAndTheBlindForest/comments/ggwkev/a_comic_i_did_a_while_back/


	3. The Sky Called To Her

“I’m never gonna fly, are I?”

Ku was calm. Too calm. She’d been frustrated, angry about it before. But now there was just… nothing. It was like the light inside her had gone out. Not literally, because she didn’t have one, but whatever creatures of darkness had instead. When Ori looked at her it was like standing at the edge of a deep, dark well of hopelessness.

After the first few crashes, Naru and Gumo had built her a small ramp out over the pond. Ku was reluctant to use it at first – she’d never liked getting wet – until after one bad landing she came running to Naru’s side holding her good wing at a funny angle, sobbing so hard she could barely get the words “It’s broken” out. It wasn’t, but she was lucky it wasn’t. It scared Ku, it scared Naru into forbidding Ku from jumping off of anything that  _ wasn’t _ over water while trying to fly, and it scared Ori into telling her how sharp pieces of bone could poke out through the skin of a broken limb.

Ku’d been practicing all summer, and she’d spent almost that whole day throwing herself off the ramp. Ori was starting to worry she wouldn’t stop until she was too tired to swim, let alone fly, but when the sun set and the air got chilly she gave up, in a way she hadn’t given up before.

“Don’t say that, Ku. You’re just… you’d be doing fine if it weren’t for that wing, so when the feathers come in -”

“They’re not going to come in!” Ku said dejectedly. “I’ve molted over and over, and they’re always like this! Like… worms!” She tugged at one, and winced. They really did look a little like worms with her features damp. The little pair of long, skinny feathers on her forehead that reminded everyone of Ori’s antennae lay flat, like wilted flowers. He knew she was probably right. There was something wrong with the skin under the bad feathers, like it was scarred.

She was so close. She was so heartbreakingly close. Her right wing could just barely keep her from rolling over in the air if she flapped it as hard as she possibly could, but it was too hard. Ku’s longest ‘flights’ were usually followed by her muscles cramping so badly she had to lie on her back to make it hurt less.

“Maybe you’re still too young?” Ori offered. “Naru said she couldn’t even _walk_ when she was your age. You’re growing so fast, but…” He thought of how Kuro towered over spirits and even small trees, and every beat of her wings was like a violent storm. “You still have a long way to go.”

“If I wanted to hear what Naru said I’d ask her!” Ku snapped. Her voice rose, and for a moment there was a pale flash in her eyes. She turned away and shuffled as far away as she could without falling off the platform into the water. She sat there, hunched over, not making a sound besides fast, shallow breathing.

“Sorry...” Ori didn’t have the heart, or the nerve, to say anything else.

“It’s okay. I just… I wanted to talk to you instead of her.”

“What’s wrong with Naru?”

“Nothing, it’s just… well… she’s _Naru!_ ” Ku tried to stand up straighter and puff her stomach out, but almost toppled backwards and had to steady herself with a flap of her wings. “She’s never going to fly… either. Not what I mean, what I mean is -”

“Naru isn’t supposed to fly?”

“Yeah. So she doesn’t understand. But you can _almost_ fly, just like me. And… you flew one, back when you saved Nibel, didn’t you? With the feather?”

“Uhh… not really fly, just… fall sideways. Or get blown around like a leaf if the wind was strong enough.”

“Do you miss it?”

An image came to Ori’s mind of needle-sharp crystalline spikes, rushing up to meet him as an unexpected downdraft yanked him out of the sky. He stifled a laugh. It wasn’t funny, but the idea that he’d  _ miss _ it was. “Not really.”

“Oh.” Ku’s face fell. “Yeah. I guess you don’t need to fly to get up to the treetops.”

Ori sighed. He didn’t have an answer to that. She was right. He could see a lot more of Nibel than she could. He stared out into the distance. The sun had set, but not too long ago. Stars were out, but the Western sky was still light, and the Ginso Tree’s silhouette jutted from the skyline of Thornfelt Swamp. Then an idea occurred to him. “Maybe we can build a raising platform that’ll get you up there.”

She swatted at him with a wing. “It’s not about the trees! I...” She looked up into the night sky. Ori followed her eyes to the constellation of Yirba, the Owl. Not that he called it that much anymore. He couldn’t remember which one of them first decided Kuro should have a place in the stars, but he hoped the name would stick. “I want to know if I’m alone.”

“Alone?”

Ku nodded. “Yeah. Naru and you and Gumo are my family, and – and I love you and I don’t want you to go away, or...” Her voice broke, and she abruptly wrapped her wings around him. “Or want to leave forever, but… there aren’t any other owls in all of Nibel. And I want to know if – if there are any others out there somewhere, or if my Mom and my brothers and sisters were the only ones, and I’m – I’m the last one, like Gumo is, and all I have left is that little feather!”

Ori’s throat got painfully tight, and his ears fell to his sides. He hugged Ku tightly, stroking the smooth, damp feathers of her back in the spot where she said it always hurt after trying to fly. Ku’s soul wasn’t soft and gentle the way Naru’s or Sein’s was. The darkness in her didn’t hurt him like Kuro’s had, but her feelings were raw and exposed in more than just her face and her voice. Hurt and sorrow and guilt rippled from her like waves in a pond, and washed over him, turning light into shadows. But he couldn’t let go. He wanted there to be something he could say, just a few simple words that would make her feel better, but he knew he couldn’t. Some feelings came and went like clouds in the sky, and some were stronger, more purposeful, like storms. But some were like the cold of winter. They were there for a  _ reason. _

He could give Ku warmth, and shelter, but he couldn’t make the spring come without the sun in the sky. How could she  _ not _ miss something she should have had from birth? She should have been able to fly, and she should have had the chance to meet her mother, and her siblings. Sometimes Ori felt the same way. He hadn’t felt the same uncertainty about who he was, or where he came from, for a long time, but he often found himself wondering what it would have been like if Nibel had never gone blind. He  _ should _ have had brothers and sisters, but all he knew of them was the fragments of memory the Ancestral Trees had shown him.

But Ori couldn’t turn back time, and he couldn’t make Ku’s feathers grow the way they were supposed to.

Then something  _ clicked _ in his mind like a keystone sliding into place. “Feathers?” He muttered. He wriggled free of Ku and stared at her wing.

“Ori?” She asked uncertainly. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Just… stay there for a minute.” He didn’t want to get her hopes up if it didn’t work. He probably wouldn’t find out until she tried it, or at least they saw how it fit,. “I have an idea!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watching the opening cutscene of WotW repeatedly as a reference, just… aww! How are these little creatures this adorable? I was a bit nervous about trying to write for Ku. My headcanon mental age for her is, like… 6-8 at the time of the main plot (a couple years younger in the last chapter), and I’m not sure if I’m getting that right, but I am liking the way her voice is turning out so far.
> 
> Poor Naru, though. She’s probably asking herself why she always gets the stubborn kids.


	4. Together on New Wings

_ No matter how high we flew, the sky was always still above us, always just a little out of reach. _

  
  


When Ku saw the feather, she knew immediately what it meant. She begged Ori to put it on, but she was so excited she couldn’t sit still, hopping around like the ground was red hot. Even when she’d calmed down enough to hold out her wing instead of trying to knock her over with it, she quivered with anticipation.

But that excitement soon turned to frustration again. For both of them. It wouldn’t work. Or at least, Ori couldn’t make it work. No matter how he tried to tie the feather to her wing, it was either too loose and fell off or got twisted around the wrong way after just a few wingbeats, or it was so tight that it hurt her, and eventually either the twine rubbed at her skin and it started to slip anyway, or it snapped.

They finally had to admit defeat and ask for Gumo’s help in the morning. At least, morning according to Ku, which meant the sky had just started to get light over the Forlorn Mountains. Usually she was lucky to wake up halfway through the morning unless someone got her up.

Even with all of Gumo’s skill, it took several tries to get right. He didn’t explain most of his muttering, or the diagrams he scribbled on a piece of bark with a stick of charcoal, but Ori watched his every move intently, and realized his mistake. Ku’s real feathers were like dead branches, useless for catching the air, but they were strong. A branch staked into the ground could still hold up a hammock, and the misshapen feathers were still strongly attached to her wing, and could hold the good one in place. Gumo delicately lashed the Kuro’s feather to Ku’s in six places, using a new length of twine each time, and twice to her wing to keep it from slipping off backwards. There was no way it could  _ possibly _ slip or twist now!

And it  _ worked. _ Ku almost leaped into the air on her first try, but ended up flat on her back because she was so used to having to work far harder with her right wing. It took the rest of the day before she could make a short flight and actually land on her feet, and she would only go to bed with a promise from Naru that at dawn she could try to make a longer journey.

Ku barely slept at all that night, which meant Ori barely slept at all. She was fidgeting and rolling over and almost kicking him out of the nest and whispering in his ear. But he doubted he could have slept anyway. He was excited too. He knew how badly she’d wanted this, and for how long. But he was worried, too. He wasn’t sure what about. He trusted Gumo’s handiwork, and he knew Ku was strong enough, and able to stay in control. He just had a vague feeling of  _ something _ going wrong.

* * *

“Ori! Ori, wake up!”

“Hmmmm?” Ori groaned.

“It’s dawn!”

Ori opened one eye. Weak, deep blue light met it. “No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is! Come on! Let’s go! Naru and Gumo are up! You’re just lazy!”

Ori stretched, yawned, and half-rolled, half-slid off the nest. “Okay, okay...” He guessed it was sort of dawn. There were pink clouds in the sky, and Ku was probably right that the sun would have risen if there weren’t mountains in the way. He followed the giddy owlet out of the cave. She was almost flying already, a couple wingbeats making each hop carry her as high as Ori could jump without springing off the air.

“Did you decide where you’re going to fly _to_ yet?”

“I’m not going _to_ anywhere. I’m gonna see how far I _can_ go!”

“In circles? Ku I know you’re excited, but you can’t go out of sight, remember?”

She gave him a self-satisfied look, like she’d solved a puzzle he couldn’t. “That’s why you’re coming with me!”

“That’s… actually a good idea. But we have to make sure Naru and Gumo are okay with it, okay?”

“Okay! Hey Uncle Gumo, I can go as far as I want if I take Ori with me, right?”

With the question phrased like  _ that _ Ori was half expecting Gumo to say no. But the Gumon just shrugged and smiled mischievously. “I don’t see any problem. We were sending Ori after you if you went too far, anyway.”

“ _What?_ Why me?” Ori said with feigned indignance. He was the only one who’d be able to keep up, and if something happened – the Light forbid if something happened – he could get to her faster.

“Because you were asleep when we voted on it.”

“When? She kept me up all night. Probably on purpose so I’d be too tired to chase her!”

“Yesterday, while you were practicing. Don’t worry, you’d have been outvoted anyway – whoa! Sorry, Ori!” Without looking up from the wooden disc he was carving a hole into, Gumo reached over with one long, spidery arm, and patted Ori on the head. Ori tensed as soon as he saw the movement in the corner of his eye. He _knew_ it was Gumo, but the moment his hand touched his ears he ducked away with a startled yelp, activating Eki’s power and darting across the clearing. A pebble caught his hoof, and he almost fell, barely catching himself on all fours.

“It’s… it’s okay!” Ori said, his voice shaking a little. Deep breath… deep breath. What was wrong with him today? He wasn’t usually _this_ jumpy anymore.

Ku tilted her head, and gave him a concerned look. She gave her good wing a quick preen before starting down the path to the ramp. “Ori? Are you coming?”

“Yeah.” Ori dashed up to her, more carefully this time. “So, uhh… are you ready to fly?”

“Yeah!” Ku hooted, bouncing into the air again. “Are you?”

“Huh?”

“What do you mean, _huh?_ ”

“I mean… I’m ready to watch _you_ fly, but… I can’t fly, remember?”

“You can if I carry you!”

Ori looked down at Ku’s feet and grimaced. “Uh, Ku? Maybe that’s not such a good idea.” He wasn’t scared of her. He didn’t  _ believe _ she’d ever hurt him. But the idea of being seized in an owl’s talons and dragged into the air just reminded him too much of… things. He couldn’t really remember the one time Kuro had actually grabbed him, but he’d had nightmares about those talons crushing the life out of him for a long time. And he’d had run-ins with the bird-like corruptions. They were about Ku’s size, if he thought about it. He didn’t want too, but he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help imagining a razor-sharp beak sinking into the back of his neck. “You’re, uhh… kind of sharp.” That was true. Even if she wasn’t  _ trying _ to hurt him, she’d accidentally drawn blood a couple times trying to perch on Naru’s arm, and that was when her claws were smaller.

She followed his eyes down, laughed, and shook her head rapidly. “No, I’m gonna carry you like Naru does, silly!”

“...On your back?” Ori said skeptically.

“Yeah. That way if you fall off I can tell Naru it was your fault, not mine!”

“That doesn’t make me want to do this any more.” Ori covered his face with one hand, trying to hide his smile. It wouldn’t have been that funny if it weren’t for the innocent tone she used. “Besides, maybe we should wait until you know you can fly by yourself before adding extra weight.”

“But I _do_ know I can fly by myself! And you aren’t heavy at all!” Ku whined. “Ori, _please_! I want… I want to _share_ this with you! And you’ve been helping me so much. You should get to see it too!”

“What about Gumo? He’s the one who fixed your wing.”

Ku stuck out her tongue. “I’m not waiting ‘til I’m big enough to carry  _ him! _ ” she said. Her brow furrowed, and she scraped a few lines on the ground with her talons. “Hey! Maybe you can draw him and Naru a picture!”

“Maybe. Ku, I’m still not sure -”

“Ori.” Ku stepped closer, but stared at the ground. Her voice quavered. “Please? I’m…” She took a deep breath. “I’m worried the feather will come off. You know how to fix it, right?”

“I don’t think it’s coming to come off,” said Ori. He at least thought he’d followed most of the knots Gumo used. He could probably tie it back on if he had to. At least, on the ground. But if it did break… Ori wasn’t afraid of falling off Ku’s back. Not really. He could use his aerial jump to break his fall, or throw a Light Burst below him and reflect it down into the ground, and even if he didn’t he’d fallen long distances before and not been hurt that badly. But Ku… If they were both falling, there was only one thing he could think of. Reem’s power. It was dangerous – it had definitely hurt the corruptions he’d used it on directly, but he didn’t think it had ever killed one with just one use. If he could fling her up and himself down before they hit the ground, it would probably at least be safer than falling…

No. The feather  _ couldn’t _ come off. He had to make sure it didn’t. “It’s okay, Ku.” He hugged the owlet tight against his body, like their lives depended on him not letting go. “I’ll come with you. I’m not gonna let anything happen.”

* * *

They were flying. He still couldn’t believe they were actually flying.

The sun still hadn’t quite risen when they took off. Ku barely made it off the ground at first, and Ori as about to jump off her back to keep from weighing her down, but then it was like she found her footing, and she was off like a dragonfly. He fastened the cord around his waist securing him to her leg. He hoped he wouldn’t need it, but right now the excitement, the curiosity, the  _ joy _ radiating from Ku was so strong it wouldn’t have surprised him if she decided to try flying upside-down.

Their first destination was the Sunfruit grove, to say hi to Naru, but now Swallow’s nest was far in the distance.

“Wow… he’s so… pretty!” Ku gasped. The Spirit Tree’s branches, ablaze with a hundred pinpricks of blue light, presided regally over the meadow. “Do you think he and Sein can see us?”

“Not too close, Ku, not too close!” Ori warned. “I said not too close!”

“I am not too close!” Ku protested, but widened her turn a little. Not enough for comfort. “I’m not gonna crash, do you think I’m blind?”

“You’re _way_ too close to their light! Ori replied. He tried to stop his hands from shaking. The same light that had killed her siblings… that had killed her mother. She knew, but he didn’t think she really understood. He didn’t want to scare her, but this was _dangerous!_ “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Ku was right, though. Nibel really was beautiful from the air. And it was incredible to see all the places that had given him so much trouble to get through spread out far below him. He’d caught glimpses of it riding on Kuro’s feather, but nothing like the speed and freedom Ku now enjoyed, soaring and turning and circling without having to rely on air currents to stay aloft. Now he understood the instinctual longing that had been eating Ku alive for so long. He understood why she’d wanted to share this experience with him even before she knew what it would be like herself.

And it was weird seeing some of the places up close for the first time in a long, long while. Ori hadn’t been back to Sorrow Pass since the light was restored. Or to Mount Forlorn. It was so high that even now in Autumn, after the summer’s heat melted the snow and before the next winter replenished it, its summit was capped with white. Come to think of it he’d  _ never _ been up there before: the highest he’d gone was…

“The nest is around here, isn’t it?” Ku asked. The air turned solemn and cold. Kuro’s nest.

“Yeah. Up there.” Ori pointed. Below them was the pond he’d dived into to escape her, and nearly froze to death. Now it was lush and green again, surrounded by a miniature forest of reeds. It was too cold for the water lilies that grew by Swallow’s Nest, though. The streams that ran through the Valley of the Winds were fed by springs and meltwater from the mountains. “Do you want to see it?”

“No.” Ku shook her head and banked away to the West. “Maybe some other time. I want to, but… I want today to be having fun, and exploring.”

  
  


It was still mid-morning when they dove through the cloud bank, and found the flock of Red-Horned Geese heading out over the sea. It was Ori’s idea to follow them at first, but he only meant for it to be for a little while. They’d made almost a complete circuit of Nibel. Past the Ginso Tree, over Thornfelt Swamp, to where the rivers ended. They just had to turn to the East, and they’d be close to home.

“Where are they going?” Ku asked.

“They’re flying North for the winter. Probably somewhere it doesn’t snow.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a bit. “Will I have to fly North for the winter now?”

“What? No! Of course Ku! I mean… I don’t think so, at least.” Did her kind do that? He was pretty sure he’d seen other kinds of owl in the winter before. Had there been snow in the little flashes of memory he’d seen at the nest? “You don’t _have_ to go anywhere if you don’t want to.” He patted her head reassuringly.

The coast slowly receded into the distance. Ori didn’t realize how far they’d gone until he looked back and saw the low-lying swampland, and even the hills of Swallow’s Nest, submerged beneath the horizon. The mountains and the lone spire of the Ginso Tree were all that was left of Nibel, and even they were fading into the thin mist that hung above the sea. The geese were staying low over the waves, and the waves were getting bigger.

“Uhh… Ku?” he said nervously. “I think we should head back. Aren’t you getting tired?”

“A little,” she admitted. “But I want to see where they’re going!”

“They’re going out over the ocean. It might go on forever, to the other side of the world!” Ori stared down at the unforgiving gray swell. He’d never liked the sea. Its water hadn’t been poisoned when Nibel went blind, but it was undrinkable even before. It was far outside the influence of the Element of Waters, cold and eye-stingingly salty and nothing like the lakes and streams he knew. He didn’t venture as far as the shore often, but he’d seen creatures that could swallow him and Ku whole in a single bite washed up dead on the rocks.

“No it doesn’t. There’s something up ahead, look!”

Ori squinted at the horizon. “You’re right...” It was almost like drowned branches poking out of the sea. But it was so far away, stained blue by the color of the sky and hard to even see at all. It couldn’t be… “Is that… a tree?”

Ku looked up and grinned. “Only one way to find out!”

  
  


Ori was reluctant. They didn’t even know how far away it really was. He had to trust Ku when she said she could make it there, but he he was getting less and less confident they could make it home by nightfall.

“Why’s it have to be by nightfall?”

“Because Naru and Gumo are going to be worried about us if we’re gone that long,” Ori explained.

“No one said we _couldn’t_ stay out at night.”

“They didn’t say we _could_ , because we didn’t ask.”

“You leave and don’t come back all night sometimes.”

“Not for a while. And it’s different. I’m older, and… they know I can take care of myself. Besides, that’s in Nibel. Naru’d be pretty worried if I went this far away without telling her, even by myself.”

“Well... she doesn’t know we’re not in Nibel, right?”

“Ku, I’m _not_ going to lie about where we went!” Ori said firmly.

“I didn’t say I wanted to lie, I just… she won’t be that worried about us, right?” Fear and worry were creeping into Ku’s own voice.

“No, but she’ll be really angry when she finds out, and she’ll be worried every time you fly out of sight after that. _If_ you’re allowed to fly out of sight. Come on, we can see what’s on the other side another time. We need to turn back.”

“But...”

“Ku, you only got to fly out of sight of Swallow’s Nest because I’m with you, remember? That’s because Naru and Gumo trusted me to keep you safe, and trusted you to _listen_ to me and not do anything stupid!” He hated doing this to her. He hated feeling like he was in charge, like it was driving a wedge of authority between them. But he had to. “If you can’t do that, we won’t get to do this again, not for a long time! We’re turning back _now_!”

“Fine...” Ku grumbled.

But Nibel’s shore never came back over the horizon, and the Ginso Tree barely seemed to get any closer. Maybe a little, but it was fading… low clouds rolled over the horizon, and Ori realized with alarm that he couldn’t see it at all anymore. There was nothing but gray water and the unknown. The wind was picking up, and they were passing the waves much faster now. Little white patches of foam appeared on their crests. They were being driven farther and farther from home.

“Umm… Ori?” Ku said anxiously. “I – I don’t think I can make it back like this!” She was breathing more heavily now, and stopped flapping her wings and just glided more often. “I need to land!”

Ori felt like they’d crashed into the cold, dark water already. “Okay… okay… don’t panic...” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “I guess we’re going to the other side after all. Don’t worry about Naru, or Gumo. We’ll make it home tomorrow, and… just don’t worry.”

  
  


After they turned around another flock of birds caught up with them. The mysterious tree loomed larger, and closer. Its whole trunk was visible now. It wasn’t quite as tall as it seemed, but that was because it grew atop a range of dark, craggy mountains… and yet it was as big as the mountains.

“Whoa...” Ku whispered. “I’ve never seen a tree that big in my whole life, except the Spirit Tree!”

“I know...” said Ori. The Ginso Tree was taller, but it was skinnier. This tree was stout, maybe even stouter than the Spirit Tree and just as tall, with two colossal trunks. There were more mountains behind it, and land crept over the horizon. They reached it just as the sun sank beneath the waves. Clouds billowed overhead, and rain began to fall.

But the geese turned away. They shied away from the great tree like it was repelling them, veering towards the sunset. Ori and Ku were alone in the sky, with a strange land below them. There were hills, and lakes, and snowcapped mountains in the distance that reminded him of home. But not, he realized, in a good way. This tree wasn’t the Spirit Tree. Ori couldn’t feel any light from it, not even the faint flicker that had remained when he met him for the first time.

“Ori?” Ku said uncomfortably. “I don’t wanna land in the trees. Not in this wind. There’s water down there, do you think we should-?”

Ori shook his head vigorously, then remembered she couldn’t see him. “No. This is… this is weird. There’s something  _ wrong  _ with this place, Ku. It’s like… It feels like Nibel felt when the Light was lost!” He hadn’t recognized it back then. The change was too gradual. But now, it felt like stepping out of the sun into a dark, clammy cave. “I don’t think the water down there’s safe to land in.”

“Okay.” Ku started to climb again. “I think I can make it to the mountains. I can see a lake there, by that big tower thing!”

But the weather was getting worse, and worse. The wind was driving them back with blinding sheets of rain now. Thunder roared, and flashes of lightning lit up the sky. Ori dug his fingers into Ku’s shoulders so hard he was afraid he’d pull her feathers out. He’d always been scared of storms, but it was a thousand times worse in the air. Deep breath… she wasn’t saying anything, but he knew it was probably hurting her.

“Ku? Never mind the lakes. We have to find somewhere to land _now!_ Even if it’s in the trees.”

“I’m trying!” Ku shouted, her voice filled with fear. “I’m trying, the – the air won’t let me!” She lurched and swayed from side to side, trying to steady herself, trying to lean forward into a dive. But she was right. Ori felt it too. They were being pulled upward, higher and higher, into the storm.

“Fold your wings!”

“I can’t! We’ll fall!” Ku closed them anyway, just for a second, and a gust rolled them over upside-down. Ori clung to her feathers for dear life. Ku flapped wildly, righting them again, and Ori was slammed into her back as the wind caught her wings again.

The rain was all around them, so hard it was like standing under a waterfall. Ori could barely see, and he could barely hear Ku’s voice as the ground got farther away.

“Just fall then! Just fall, it shouldn’t be as bad close to the ground!”

“No! I can’t do it, I’ll crash!” she screamed. “Help! Ori, help!”

That was the last thing Ori heard for a long time. A blinding flash lit up the whole sky like daytime, and an instant later there was a crash that left his ears ringing. They were in the clouds now, or at least in rain so thick it looked like a cloud and felt like they were underwater. The raindrops were hitting so hard it hurt – no, they weren’t raindrops, they were hailstones. The storm had blotted out the moon and stars, and the only light besides his own was the lightning. They were tossed and spun like a leaf, turned over and over so much Ori didn’t know which way was up anymore, and battered by hail. He’d never experienced wind like this in his life, not even on Sorrow Pass.

Then he saw it. The feather was flapping up and down on her wing. Some of the pieces of twine were broken, and it looked like some of her feathers had snapped too.

“Ku? Try to hold as steady as you can!” Ori shouted over the wind and hail. He leaned to one side, unwinding one of the extra pieces he’d brought from his wrist. But he had to let go with both hands to do it, and even then his fingers were so numb he could barely get it apart. He just had to tie it on where it had come loose – just to get it steady, just to last long enough to get back to the ground.

But then a hailstone hit Ku right on the wing, and a violent gust of wind tossed them sideways. He saw the feather peel away just before it came loose, and snatched it just in time, but lost his grip on Ku. The safety line stopped him, so hard it felt like it would cut him in half. They were flung together again, collided, pulled back to the end… and the line snapped.

For a moment, Ori could see the shocked look on her face as she tumbled away in the gale. Somehow she steadied herself, and he tried to angle himself so the wind would carry him toward her, but another gust ripped the feather from his hands. The last thing he remembered was her scream, and her dark shape silhouetted against the clouds far above him as he plummeted towards the Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, my characterization for Ori these last couple chapters sounded a little off at first. And then I realized what it was… I’m actually writing him happy for once! Or at least in a better mental state than he was in pretty much the entirety of Blind Forest. Well, that was fun while it lasted: now welcome to Ori and the Forest of Trauma 2!
> 
> Also, yeah: North for the winter. I’m pretty sure Nibel is in the Southern hemisphere based on what the cutscenes show. The sun rises on the left side of the screen and sets from the right as we’re looking from Swallow’s Nest towards the rest of Nibel, which means it has to be to the North of everything else and the map we see in game is actually upside-down compared to the typical North = Up convention. And when Ori and Ku reach Niwen they’re very clearly flying to the right with the sun setting behind them, so they’re going North, and it seems to be in the Fall since the birds are leaving Nibel.
> 
> It’s kind of hard to tell where everything is because all the directions are “flattened” into the 2D perspective of the game, but based on where the sun actually rises in Spring and Fall at temperate latitudes, Mount Forlorn and Horu have to be a little Northeast of Nibel if it’s in the Northern Hemisphere, or Southeast if it’s in the Southern, and the Ginso Tree’s probably to the Southwest. I tried drawing a couple maps, and if we assume it’s in the Northern Hemisphere Swallow’s Nest has to be kind of in the middle of everything, whereas if it’s in the South I can get something closer to what we see in the same with Swallow’s Nest on the outskirts and the Spirit Tree more central.
> 
> Today in “fun things researched while writing fanfiction”: the stories of skydivers, paragliders, and a fighter pilot who’ve been sucked into thunderstorms and survived. Good lord, it’s terrifying. People have been sucked up to airliner cruising altitudes in a matter of minutes.


	5. Separated By the Storm

“Ku!” Ori called into the raging storm. “Ku! Where are you?”

There was no answer, just like the last ten times he’d called for her. The next time he tried, his voice broke. “Ku, please!... Please answer me!… Please be okay!”

This couldn’t be happening! This couldn’t be happening! It was like he’d fallen into a nightmare.

He didn’t know how far he’d fallen, but he did know he hadn’t caught himself with a midair jump like he’d thought, because he didn’t remember hitting the ground. He’d woken up, sprawled on his back on one of the few patches of dry ground in this place. Dry, relatively, at least. Solid, and not underwater, but definitely wet. Like it mattered. He was already soaked to the skin and shivering. Everything hurt. His whole body was bruised, and he felt weak, and sick, like his legs would give way under him at any minute. He’d done something to his ankle in the fall, and he could barely walk on it.

But he had to find her. This was all his fault. If he hadn’t tried to make her turn around when the winds were carrying them away from Nibel, they could have found shelter long before the storm hit. If he hadn’t let her fly out over the ocean in the first place, none of this would have happened. They’d both be at home, safe in bed. Alive. He was trying not to think about the possibility, but the idea just wouldn’t go away. They’d been so high up when the feather got torn off by the wind and hail, and she couldn’t stay airborne without it. There were plenty of trees around that might have broken her fall, and water, so maybe… he had to keep hoping.

The land he’d fallen into was some kind of swamp, but not like the one he knew. The trees and plants were different; the undergrowth was hardier-seeming than the ferns he knew: tough weeds and bulrushes, with imposing conifers jutting into the sky out of sight. The moon and stars were still covered by black cloud, but glowing fungi gave the place an eerie blue light. Dark, murky water danced with the impacts of raindrops and hailstones. The plants and trees constantly swayed in the wind, a thousand false threats in the corner of his eye. An extra-lifelike shadow made him almost jump out of his skin, and he landed with his hands raised to protect himself, lighting a spark of Spirit Flame.

Or at least, he tried. But the power wouldn’t come. And, Ori realized with growing panic as he tried to find his way through the gloom, neither would anything else! He could still bounce up vertical outcrops and tree trunks the way Fil’s ancestral tree had taught him, but any time he tried to do anything where he had to focus his own Light, all he got was a headache and a dizzy feeling. Leru’s midair jump, Eki’s lightning-fast movement, Nir’s explosive leaps… nothing.

The stench of decay hung thick in the air, and there was a suffocating feeling, like his strength was being damped and blotted out. It was like Nibel had felt in the days of decay… but he’d been able to make all the techniques work back then.

Only it was different. He’d had Sein with him then. She’d shared her strength with him, and helped him focus his own. When the Spirit Tree was restored and the decay gone, Ori was still able to do almost everything, but it had taken him months to learn to use Spirit Flame without Sein’s help, and at first he could only use Sol and Nir’s powers close to either the Tree or a Spirit Well. He hadn’t mastered Charge Flame so far.

Now he had nothing. He knew… he  _ knew _ that if this place had been taken by the Decay, there were things somewhere out there in the darkness that hunted creatures of light like him. Even if he found Ku, even if she was okay, he couldn’t protect her. She couldn’t fly, even if she wasn’t hurt. They were stranded here, with no way to go home, no way to get help.

No… there was a way. There was one way. There was just one power that he’d been able to use even before he’d found Sein. The Soul Link. He hadn’t had to  _ really _ use it since the Light returned, but he’d moved it out of the depths of Mount Horu. The last time he’d checked on the heatless blue flame was a few months ago, when it was still in the hollow tree where he’d hidden it last winter.

Some of the water here was clean… ish. He didn’t want to try to drink it or swim in it if he didn’t had to, but  touching it wasn’t going to kill him . But some of it had the unmistakable, nauseating smell of the blighted water.

He had a way home. All he had to do was jump in, and brave the pain for a few seconds.

At least, he thought so. But he didn’t  _ know. _ What if the Soul Link would only work up to a certain distance? He’d never really tested its limits. And if it did work, what then? What could he do besides tell Naru and Gumo he’d abandoned his sister out in this wasteland? How would he, how would any of them make their way back here? The ocean was much too far, and much too rough, to swim across. Even paddling a little raft, how long would it take, how long would Ku be left all alone for?

No. He wouldn’t do it. Not even by accident. Ori took a deep breath, raised his hand in front of him, and summoned up a power he hadn’t used in a long, long time. It was weakened, too. It didn’t heal the bruises and the hurt ankle like it could before. But the reassuring blue flames appeared in the little clearing.

His only chance of going home was gone. But he didn’t care. They were in this together, no matter what happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I’m finally done with the opening cutscene, 7800 words in – over 9000 (ha) counting the prologue. That’s already almost a third the length of 100 Themes of the Blind Forest!
> 
> Yeah, the Soul Link’s back. This is one of the few game mechanics decisions for WotW that I genuinely dislike. Just give me my Soul Link back and let me bind bash to Y and one of my weapons to LB so my muscle memory from the first game still works! I really liked the strategic aspect of deciding where to set my save points, and the control it gave me over the process. If I die and have to backtrack a long way, it’s my own fault for not using it. There have been times in Wisps where I’ve failed at crossing an obstacle, died, and found that it respawned me on the other side, which seems kind of… cheap.
> 
> And I do also have legitimate story reasons for doing this. I’m a selfish whump writer and I want to keep getting Ori killed over and over! And, y’know, some actual thematic reasons about persistence and succeeding via trial and error, that sort of thing.
> 
> Ugh, I had to come up with a decent explanation for why Ori would lose access to almost all of his abilities. “He forgot how to use them because he didn’t stay in practice” or “He needed Sein’s power to use them before” would probably work in actual canon, but the problem is I already wrote Ori being able to use them after the ending of Blind Forest.


	6. A Lost Spirit

Ori tore through the dark swamp, over hummocks and trees slick with slimy moss, and through dense undergrowth. The thorns cut and scratched him, but he didn’t trust any ground that  _ wasn’t _ covered in vegetation, because there was a good chance it  _ wasn’t _ ground, or at least not solid. Although even the solid ground was treacherous. A rotten log had collapsed under him and sent him sliding down a gulley already.

He wasn’t calling out for Ku anymore. He’d been right. There  _ were _ corruptions here, and it was bad enough that they were attracted to his light  without him making extra noise . So far all he’d encountered were slow-moving slimes that didn’t even shoot anything at him. They would have been so easy to deal with  normally, or just avoid, but without any way to fight back they were a real danger if he stayed in one place long enough to let them gather around him in numbers.

There was other life, too, but he had no idea if it was just as hostile. He’d seen the lights of a cluster of rounded dwellings, built on stilts over the swamp or in trees, but they were across a stretch of water too wide to jump. He’d caught a glimpse of some dark-furred creatures gathered around a stone hearth, but they scattered as soon as he came near. Glowing green eyes watched him out of the darkness, but they didn’t show themselves again. The slimes didn’t come near the fire, though, and that gave him an idea. He’d taken a burning branch, both for more light and as a weapon. The corruptions were afraid of it, but the small flame hissed and spat in the rain. Ori was doing his best to shield it with a large leaf, but he was afraid any moment the fire would be doused, and then he’d be left with nothing but a stick. Hitting the slimes with it probably wouldn’t do much.

There was a bit of higher ground next to a hillside, and denser trees that might give some shelter. Ori was desperate to reach it before the torch went out. He’d slipped and almost fallen multiple times, and he was more focused on the ground under his hooves than what lay ahead. He bounded over a stump that formed a gap in the middle of a dense thicket of brambles, and ran headlong into a pair of long, stiltlike legs.

“Squork!” Their owner stumbled back with a startled croak. “Watch where you’re going, you little… whatever you are! And be careful with that torch, you almost put my eye out!”

Ori took a moment to catch his breath. “S-sorry,” he panted. He stood up, eyeing the creature warily. He was a bird, about twice Ori’s height, with the look of a wader, but he’d never seen his kind before. He had small, beady, but intelligent eyes, an enormous yellow beak, and a heavily-patched bag slung over his back. He wasn’t a creature of Light or Dark, but a Gray, like most creatures in the world, and Ori couldn’t feel anything from his soul. He’d never been attacked by anything that could talk before, but with so much adrenaline in his veins it was hard to see him as anything but a threat. He edged his way around the bird, keeping his distance and not taking his eyes off him. Then a twig snapped under his hoof, and he leaped into the air with a startled squeak.

“Jumpy, aren’t you?” laughed the bird. He seemed more curious than angry. “What are you, anyway? Not a Moki, clearly. I’ve seen a couple white ones, but not any that glow in the dark.”

“I’m Ori.” Wait – he asked what, not who. “I’m a – a spirit,” he added before the bird could point that out.

“Bah! Pull the other one!” The bird cocked his head with an irritated expression. “There haven’t been spirits in Niwen since before my grandpa was hatched!”

_ Niwen? _ This place was called Niwen? And there’d been spirits here in the past? “I haven’t been here long,” he said shakily. “I came from Nibel.”

“Nibel? Never heard of it. And I’ve visited most lands near and far around here. Somewhere across the water, maybe?”

Ori nodded.

“What are you doing over here then, eh? Not many reasons to come that far.”

“We didn’t mean to. We were just exploring, and – and the wind wouldn’t let us get back, and then the storm blew up, and -”

“We?”

“My sister!” Trying to put what had happened into words was making all the fear, all the guilt, all the confused tumult of emotion fresher and rawer, like scraping the scab off a wound before it had even had time to harden. He was trying so hard to keep himself from crying, but his voice quivered and tears formed in his eyes. “The wind separated us and we fell, and I don’t know _where_ she fell, and I – I’ve gotta find her!”

The bird shook his head sympathetically. “All right, kid, it’s going to be all right. Just catch your breath and calm down.” He took the twig he was chewing on out of his mouth, wedging it between two wing feathers. “That fall must’ve given you a real scare. This might seem like a stupid question, but did you look around the tree or the cliff? Even on a night like this your kind shouldn’t be too hard to spot.”

“She’s not a spirit, she’s an owlet!” Ori almost shouted. At the bird’s confused look he explained that Ku had been taken in as an egg. “And we weren’t in a tree. The storm pulled us up into the clouds!”

“You were flying in _this?_ ” The bird’s beady eyes almost bulged out of their sockets. He gestured at the clouds with a wing. “What, do you have a death wish? That’s crazy!”

“We weren’t trying to!” Ori wiped away angry tears. Mostly at himself. “We were trying to find a safe place to land, and it just – it blew up so fast, and – and the feather came off her wing and she can’t fly without it!”

“Hmm...” The bird grimaced and shook his head again. “That doesn’t sound good. Storms like this’ve killed much better flyers than me. But if she can swim, Inkwater Marsh isn’t the worst place to crash.” He sighed. “As long as the winds didn’t carry her too far to the East.” 

He gestured in a vague direction. But that was a better idea than Ori had before with no moon and stars. It was back sort of the way he’d come. He hastily thanked the bird and headed for the stump, but found a wing blocking his path. He jumped back, holding the torch out in front of him. The bird looked less than impressed. “Hold on, hold on, kid! You can’t go back out in this!”

“Ku’s out there in this!” Ori shouted. “I have to find her!”

“Wait ‘til the storm breaks! This place is dangerous enough by daylight!”

“That’s why I can’t leave her by herself!”

“Well, you’re not gonna find her in this. But things’ll find _you_ easily enough. You won’t be any help to her dead!”

“That’s what _you_ think,” Ori muttered.

“Eh?”

“Never mind.”

“Kid, I know you’re scared for your sister,” said the bird. “But it’s pitch black, the rain’ll put out that torch, and a storm like this could carry a flying creature to half of Niwen. The best you can do right now’s to stay in shelter and hope she’s in a state to do the same.”

Ori lowered the torch with shaking hands. Deep breath – deep breath – deep breath. No, he was right. He knew he was right. That was why he’d ended up here in the first place. It was just so  _ frustrating _ not being able to do anything but sit there and wait. Like when he and Naru couldn’t do anything but wait for the food and water to run out. His ears fell to his sides. “I understand,” he said faintly. “I just...”

“I know. I know.” The bird peered out at the sky. “Well, at least the hail’s stopped,” he said. “We might not be stuck here all night after all.” He paused. “I’m Tokk, by the way. A wanderer in these parts. The better parts, at least. Not that there are many left these days!” He chuckled sardonically.

“Why do you stay here, then?” Ori asked. “You can just fly away, can’t you?” Most of the birds had left Nibel soon after the decay started.

Tokk shrugged. “ _ Because _ I can just fly away. I can leave whenever I want – aside from rotten weather like this – so I’d rather stick around until it’s not worth the hassle anymore.”

“Oh.” Ori sighed. “Must be nice,” he muttered.

Tokk gave him a sympathetic look. “Listen. If you want to get a head start on finding her, there’s a sheltered path through the caves off to the east. But it’s behind an old Spirit Gate – do you know what those are?”

Ori groaned. “Yeah… so, it’s not  _ really _ a path unless I can find the keystones?”

“Yep. Luckily I happen to have one in my bag. It’s not much use to me, of course -” He stretched his enormous wings out. “I was going to try and trade it to the Moki, but I’ll let you have it if you can get to the other one. I’ve managed to track it down to the caves up ahead, but acquiring it is a job for someone more nimble than myself. What do you say?”

* * *

Ori returned to the sheltered stand empty-handed. The caves were treacherous, filled with thorns and brambles like the ones that had smothered Nibel. He wasn’t used to not being able to change his mind about a bad jump in midair anymore, and he’d fallen into them twice. But those wounds hadn’t been that bad. It was the resident of the cave that had almost killed him. He’d never seen a Corruption like it before: a lithe four-legged creature covered in frills and fins that glowed with sickly green and yellow light. It was  _ fast _ , and its sharp claws had nearly torn Ori to shreds. He’d blinded the thing with the torch, but it must have relied on some other sense, because it didn’t stop attacking until he swung the branch at it with all his strength, over and over and over until it stopped moving.

But the damage was already done. Ori’s arms and legs were cut to the bone. There were healing plants like the ones that grew in Nibel, but they were weaker, and one wasn’t enough to fully close the wounds. They didn’t look that bad, but they wouldn’t stop bleeding. He’d felt lightheaded at first, but halfway up a steep overhang his grip had suddenly failed. He didn’t remember hitting the ground. The next thing he knew he was lying outside the cave with blue fire all around him that offered no protection from the pouring rain.

It had happened again. He’d known it was dangerous, he’d known it  _ might _ happen, but really he’d just set the Soul Link outside the cave out of habit. But now he knew. Now he knew there were creatures like  _ that  _ here, and it could easily happen again. But not just to him this time. The danger Ku was in sunk in even deeper, and even though this time it hadn’t been  _ that _ bad, all the memories of all the times before came flooding back. He stayed there in the open, huddled against a wall, until his fur was completely soaked again by the rain and tears. When he got back to the spot where he’d died, he found a small pool of water stained red, and a soggy, useless torch. He was defenseless now.

  
  


“Found it,” Ori said flatly. He rematerialized the keystone and tossed it to the ground. It was a trick Sein had first taught him to do with Kuro’s feather – turning objects into light temporarily, and carrying them without carrying them. But it was much harder the bigger the thing was. He’d never done it with something as heavy as a keystone before. But he couldn’t have climbed back out of the cave without both hands free. The only way out was clambering along walls and ceilings covered in a strange glowing blue plant with strong stems that formed loops big enough to fit a finger, or even a hoof through.

Tokk whistled. “That’s quite a trick. Would save me having to carry this bag around!” He unslung it from his shoulder and dropped to the ground with a loud thump. “Though it won’t be as heavy now. Here’s the other keystone. I am ever a bird of my word, hmm?” He deftly undid the drawstring and fished it out with a foot, setting it down beside the one Ori had found.

“Yeah...” Ori held his hand to his temple. His head was hurting from the effort of carrying the keystone around. Two wasn’t going to be fun. “Thanks, Tokk.”

“Was it much trouble to find? You were gone long enough I was starting to worry.”

“A little. I’m… fine.” He laid his hands on the stones, and imagined them glowing brighter and brighter, then melting and flowing and becoming light that became one with the faint glow around his body.

“If you say so.” Tokk looked skeptical. “Well… best of luck finding your friend. I’ll take a look myself when there’s daylight to search by; I was headed that way anyway.” He settled down in one of the drier spots, but stopped Ori again just before he headed out into the storm again. “Oh, and one more thing. The Spirit Gate should be easy enough to find, but once you’re in the caves, make sure you take the left path after the waterfall from outside!”

“Left path,” Ori nodded. “Got it!”

  
  


Tokk was right. The spirit gate wasn’t that hard to find, although Ori had to scramble up a couple of tricky walls to get to it. He staggered to the threshold and let the keystones return to their original form, not yet fitting them into their slots. Two at once was too much… maybe  _ he  _ needed a bag like Tokk’s. He was panting from the exertion, and his head spun. Too much spinning… he’d been fighting nausea half the journey, and now he was losing. He ended up on his hands and knees, retching. But he hadn’t eaten anything since the night before, and nothing came up but throat-burning liquid. There was another feeling he  _ really _ hadn’t missed. At least nothing had poisoned him. Yet.

It was weird. He’d always felt self-conscious about Sein being there when his stomach was trying to turn itself inside-out, and he  _ hated _ when she said anything to try to comfort him – at least, when he wasn’t in too much pain to notice – but now he realized he missed having someone watching for danger.

Whatever. He’d caught his breath, he felt better, he couldn’t waste any more time. He grabbed the keystones and roughly shoved them into the slots, then stood back as the gate creaked, squealed, and slid open.

Left path… left path… left path…

But there wasn’t a left path. At least, there wasn’t anymore. He found the entrance, but it only led a few paces before it was blocked by rubble. It must have caved in since the last time Tokk, or maybe whoever told him about this path, had been down here.

But the other side of the fork was clear. Ori remembered Tokk’s warning, but… what could be so bad that was on the other side? A dead end? A fall into sharp stalagmites? And what was he supposed to do now instead? Just turn back? Wait here all night and then be back where he started in the morning? The worst that could happen was he’d have to turn back and find another way.

Still, he set the Soul Link right at the fork. That was probably a good place for it for now anyway. It was safe, and sheltered from the elements. Then he set off down the clear path, watching his footing carefully. But there was nothing to worry about. It got completely dark after a couple of turns, but this wasn’t like the Blackroot Burrows, and his own light was enough to let him see where he was going. And it wasn’t even like that for long: soon there was light ahead of him, and he emerged into a large, sheltered hollow.

Had Tokk gotten his directions mixed up, he wondered? Maybe he’d been trying to warn Ori about unstable rocks on the other side? If that was it he was glad the cave-in had happened a long time ago. He could have been caught… or worse, put his Soul Link there and had it collapse on him. But then again, maybe it was just that the passage got low enough that Tokk probably wouldn’t have had an easy time and kept banging his head on the ceiling.

Then Ori’s hoof clicked on something hard, harder than a tree root. There shouldn’t have been a rock there. He looked down, and almost jumped out of his skin.

They were bones. Dirty, broken, half-covered by moss and lichen, but they were the bones of a creature about his size.

His fur stood on end. They were old, but something – maybe someone, had died here, or been dragged here after dying. He could feel something in the air, a presence. And then… something moved. He saw it in the corner of his eye. He turned around, heart in his throat… and immediately wished he hadn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Argh, how do I write Tokk’s voice? I can hear Ori’s, or Sein’s, or Ku’s lines in my head in English, but I can’t quite get how Tokk would sound speaking English into my mind. Cryaotic read his lines in a Spanish accent on his Let’s Play, I’m tempted to just go with that but it still doesn’t seem right.
> 
> There’s really no way I can think of to explain around Ori having Hammerspace. Last game I wrote it as Sein just kind of making things like the map stones and keystones orbit her (but I guess the Light Vessel, Atsu’s Torch, etc. were too heavy for that or something? But there wasn’t really a way around it with the feather, and now Ori really does have to actually carry the keystones without being weighed down by them. But I decided to put some fairly strong limits on that early on, because I’ve written Hammerspace-using characters in other fics, and even without their other abilities having a strong Hammerspace would probably be game-breaking for Ori if he could just put anything he wanted in it.


	7. An Ancient Light

_Though they are gone from our forest, they will forever live on as long as we remember them… and learn from their mistakes._

  
  


The creature that had attacked Ori wasn’t like the others.

He could tell as soon as he felt its hot breath against his back, as soon as he saw the cloudy blackness that rose from its shaggy fur like steam.

It wasn’t a Corruption. It was a creature of darkness, like Kuro. No, it was more like the creatures he’d encountered two winters ago, high on the slopes of Mount Horu. He couldn’t feel any of the swirl of conflicting emotions he’d felt from her; there was only hunger, and a cold, keen, predatory intelligence. It was a part of nature, but it was nature outside the Spirit Tree’s protection,  nature that cared nothing for spirits’ role as defenders of the balance.

Its howl seemed to pierce through to his very soul. The world distorted like it was a reflection on the rippling surface of a pond. Ori didn’t know if the ground  _ actually _ moved underfoot, but he stumbled and fell all the same, and for a fraction of a second that almost cost him his life, he didn’t even remember  _ how _ to run. But once he remembered, it was all he could think of.

_ Run. _

Even if he could have used every skill the Ancestral Tree s taught him , he knew he wouldn’t have had a chance trying to fight it, but at least he could have gotten away. Right now, the stumps and rocks and dense undergrowth were as much a hindrance to him as to his pursuer, and its long limbs covered so much ground with every step that it didn’t even seem to have to  _ try. _ He was sure that he was going to die.

But it was the beast’s nature that saved Ori’s life. That, and the creatures that made the fires on stone hearths in the night. Because it wasn’t a Corruption. It knew pain, and fear. It attacked cautiously, backing Ori into a corner and attacking with swift lunges and swipes from its enormous paws. But after the third or fourth time getting a burning tree branch in the face for its trouble, it turned and ran with a snarl of annoyance, sweeping the entire fire aside with its tail and scattering coals and embers across the clearing.

As Ori tried to catch his breath, he saw the glowing green eyes again, watching from the darkness. He supposed they must have been watching before, but he’d been too busy trying not to get killed to notice. And he hadn’t done the best job of that. One bite would have been instant death or a missing limb, but he’d been grazed by its claws and flung against the stones of the hearth. It hurt to lift his left arm, it hurt to breathe, and there was a deep wound in his side that wasn’t bleeding that fast, but he knew it wouldn’t stop on its own, not until it was too late.

He had to find one of the healing plants. Probably more than one. He staggered back the way he’d come, trying to keep pressure on the wounds. No matter how much he tried to tell himself it would be okay in the end one way or another, that even if he died he’d have another chance, the fear never went away.

  
  


Ori definitely remembered staggering, limping through the darkness, desperately searching for a way to heal his wounds. But when the cluster of life shards dissolved into his paw and soothing warmth spread across his body, he realized he didn’t remember which way he’d gone. He still felt weak, and his body still ached. Claw marks had faded to scratches, but they weren’t gone completely. But his mind was clear enough now to understand that it wasn’t before. The memories he knew were from just minutes ago felt like they were years old, or from a dream. He must have been close to losing consciousness.

And now he was lost. Again. He’d gotten turned around, and he still had no moon and no stars to tell directions by. He guessed he could probably follow the spotty trail of blood back, one droplet at a time. It was easier than he expected. If he concentrated, he could feel the faint little bit of his own life force each drop had taken with it.

But the trail lead him to the last place he wanted to be, ever again. There were bones. There were bones  _ everywhere. _ Some whole, some shattered, some gnawed on. The skeletons of thousands of creatures of every size littered the forest floor, so many that they were piled on top of each other and in places he had to climb over them to get past. There was a faint scent not just of decay, but of death. Ori had never seen anything like it before. Creatures had died when the forest turned blind, but he didn’t see many skeletons.

This must have been where the creature lived, or at least where it dragged the carcasses of its victims. It probably hadn’t eaten them all; there were too many skeletons that weren’t torn apart. Creatures of light and darkness that fed on other living beings could… Ku hadn’t put it into words very well. Something like feeding on their life, not just their meat. Ori wouldn’t have known about it if it weren’t for the time she found a rotten log filled with far more beetle grubs than her stomach could hold. She’d gorged herself, and then kept picking them up in her beak and spitting them back out as dry, shriveled husks.

It made Ori a little uneasy to think about. It was too similar to what the Corruptions must have done with whatever they killed, with all the Spirit Light and occasional life and energy shards that were trapped inside their bodies. But then he remembered that trapped light, that trapped life force, was what had kept  _ him _ going for most of that journey. Was he any different? He didn’t want to think about what would happen if he killed a creature that was truly alive. Could he feed off its life in the same way?

He’d been close to finding out. Well, maybe not  _ close,  _ but if the beast that had attacked him had been weaker, if he’d been stronger… could he have taken its life? Could he have  _ taken _ its life?

At the moment, he was more worried about his being taken anyway. Each creak, each click of his hoof on a dried-out bone, made him flinch as he crept through this place. It could come back any time. And he wouldn’t have the torch this time.

Then he saw the glint of green eyes again. He ran towards them, bounding up a wall, and caught a glimpse of their owner, but it scampered away into the undergrowth with a squeak.

“Hey! Wait!” Ori called. “Do you know a way out of here?” He winced at how loud his own voice sounded. Maybe making any sound was a bad idea. If that monster was still here… if it was still looking for them…

He crept through the undergrowth, the way the smaller creature had gone, as quietly as he could. But the tension in the air was evaporating the further he got from the hollow full of bones. He felt something, incredibly faint, but still there. A comforting light that was foreign and familiar at the same time. He could see it up ahead, a faint blue glow. And then…

Ori’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. It was different than all the ones he’d seen before. Its bark was dark and twisted close to itself, not like the open, weaving spiral he knew. Its branches became wispy, feathery leaves, and it held clutched in its center a single weak orb of light, not the dozens of little star-like points  he was familiar with . But the feeling he got from it was the same, it was unmistakable.

It was an Ancestral Tree.

What had Tokk said? There were spirits here before? But not for a long time. Then this… this was the final resting place of one of them. It was a grave just as much as the hollow of bones. But the tree called to him, just like the others had.

Ori approached it with trepidation. He knew it meant him no harm, but he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and braced himself as he laid a hand on the rough bark. The echoes of all the other spirits – Fil, Reem, Eki, Sol, Leru, and all the others - had also shown  him the ends of their lives, the moments when the skills they now passed on had failed them. He didn’t know why. Perhaps it was a warning. Perhaps they couldn’t help it. But he’d seen each one through their eyes, and felt their pain and fear.

Light embraced him. The last thing Ori felt was his own body  being lifted into the air , and then the swamp was gone. So was the pain in his ankle and shoulder, and the ache of hunger and thirst. In their place was strength, confidence, and the constant presence of a strong, nurturing light, as strong as the Spirit Tree’s.

The flashes of memory started out as something that was so familiar he couldn’t understand why she’d even showed it to him. Spirit Flame. But each time, it was a little different. The flame’s sporadic, dancing movement slowed. It became a single, steady tongue of flame, and then something harder, more solid, that he could actually hold in his hands.

A blade. Naru had shown Ori how to make them out of stone, but this one was so long and skinny it seemed like it would instantly shatter – and sometimes it did, but the spirit could just make a new one. And it was so smooth, and so sharp. Ori watched her practice on dead branches, bundles of grass, and finally fruits tossed into the air by another of her kind. Often, in the distance, he could see the blurry shape of an enormous two-trunked tree. But the light was growing weaker. And there was a strange feeling… like something was wrong with it.

Ori knew the next bit of memory would be the last one. There was a sort of melancholy in the light that still held him. The forest was different. Fallen leaves, dead trees, the stench of decay.

But he was still full of energy. He bounded over roots and fallen logs, and swung on vines and the blue hookmoss he’d seen in the cave. His sight was always fixed straight ahead. His heart pounded with the thrill of the chase. He was pursuing something. He was catching up.

And then… he caught his quarry. In a hollow just like this one. But the creature cornered there wasn’t what he was expecting to see. He didn’t know what he  _ was  _ expecting, but not this. Not this.

It was another spirit. 

She was panting, gasping for air. There were tears in her eyes, and he felt the fear  _ blazing  _ from her body. It was overpowering, blinding. The only shelter was in his own determination. Guilt. Regret. No! Those weren’t his feelings, they were the feelings of the spirit of the Ancestral Tree! They weren’t his, this wasn’t him! He felt her intent before she moved. He fought to stop his body from moving. He wanted to scream, to beg her to stop, beg her to let him out of this memory.  _ Why? _ Why was this happening?

But that moment only lasted a split second. Then she struck. The other spirit tried to dive past, but Ori was too quick, and the blade made his reach too long. One blow after another landed in the blink of an eye. Sparks and blood flew, and the blade of light went through flesh as easily as it had gone through the fruits. The wounds were horrific. An ear cut off… deep slashes, a leg hobbled, the tip of a tail gone… her belly ripped open. Something trailing out, pieces of her insides.

Ori’s body moved against his will. He lunged one more time. The blade of light pierced the other spirit’s chest, but she raised her arm with a silent cry of fury. There was an impossibly bright flash of light, like staring into the sun, and something hit Ori between the eyes. He felt himself falling, and crumpled to the ground – not the dry dead grass of the past, but the rain-soaked moss of the present. Then everything went dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HOO! BOY! So that just happened! Not even I saw that coming. This was a lying-awake-in-bed thought from like, two days before I actually wrote the scene, which is really not that long with the way I write. But as soon as I had the idea I knew I had to use it.
> 
> You know, are spirits actually herbivores? Or are they omnivores and it’s just that Naru’s a herbivore and she just assumed? I mean… Throughout Blind Forest Ori is literally collecting health and energy and experience from the corpses of killed enemies, and where do the life cells and energy cells and Spirit Light containers really come from anyway? This game he’s still collecting life and energy from them, and he’s trading Spirit Light to other creatures, and that’s the same exact thing he previously used to unlock abilities. So, like… this is legitimately life force being used as currency. Insert “Ori is the Dark Souls of adorable nature-themed platformer games” joke here.
> 
> But yeah, Ori’s basically actually surviving as a predator/scavenger, especially in the first game where there’s no source of actual food.


	8. No Longer Defenseless

Ori awoke to several pairs of green eyes staring intently at him.

He was surprised, a little, but not startled or scared. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because their expressions reminded him of the way Ku sometimes just stood there waiting for him to wake up when she wanted to play or ask him something but was trying to be patient and let him sleep. Maybe it was because his mind still wasn’t on the present right now.

He got up slowly, squinting in the bright light of dawn. He could still feel the Ancestral Tree’s light surrounding him, but he edged away from it. That memory… that horrible, horrible memory. Every Ancestral Tree that stood in Nibel was a place of death, of loss. A tiny little piece of a spirit who had lost the battle against the decay, and was never coming back. But this… Two spirits had died here, he was sure of that. The other one, the one who hadn’t left a tree, had been hurt too badly. But  _ why?  _ He couldn’t understand it. Why would one spirit fight another…  _ kill _ another?

“It is okay. Do not be afraid of us.” A voice brought Ori back to the present.

“Huh? Sorry. I wasn’t...” He tore his eyes away from the twisted, blackened bark and feathery leaves. “Weren’t you scared of _me_ before?”

There were half a dozen of the creatures scattered around the clearing, some on the ground, some perched on fallen logs. They were sort of a similar shape to spirits, with longer bodies that made them stand a bit taller than him on their hind legs, but they looked like they were built to run on all fours. They had large ears that twitched and waved just like his own, and long tails with white tips, but most of their fur was gray and black. They had rounded heads with short muzzles, and oval-shaped pupils in their large eyes. All of them carried a weapon of some sort – long, sharpened sticks, and stone blades lashed to wooden handles - but they were all rested on the ground or slung over their shoulders, and their faces looked friendly.

“A little bit,” said the one who’d spoken before, the one who’d come the closest to Ori. “But you are not like the others.” He had a high, but pleasant voice. He spoke Nibelian, but in a strange accent, one that was a little bit difficult to understand.

“What, alive? Not a murderer?”

The creature looked confused. He folded an ear down. “I don’t know who you are talking about,” he said. “I  _ hope _ not a killer?” He glanced down at the blade strapped to his side. “But you are not like the dark ones.”

“The shrieker!” one of the others added with a note of fear in her voice.

“The howler!”

The first creature nodded. “In you shines an ancient light. We were afraid it would attract the Decayed. But you fought Howl!”

“Only with your fire. And I was lucky.”

“But it is different now, right? The tree has shared its memory with you!”

“Yeah… I kind of wish it hadn’t.”

“Are you really a spirit?” the one who’d mentioned the shrieker crept closer. “We thought all the spirits had gone from Niwen long ago.”

“Uh-huh. I’m… not really supposed to be here. What are you? I don’t think your kind live where I come from.”

“We are Moki! The Blackgrass Lake Tribe! Or… we used to be. Now it is more of a no-grass lake.”

“Did you come from the sky?” one of the Moki asked. “There are no Moki up there. I saw you fall, in the storm!”

“No… from across the water.” Ori looked up at the dappled sunlight filtering through the trees. It was already dawn. He’d wasted the entire night. He needed to find Ku, and quickly! “I’m sorry… I have to go.”

“Can you use the light? We want to see, we want to see!”

“Huh? Oh… yeah, I… think so?” Ori took a deep breath. “I’ll try.” Even if he _thought_ about using it, it brought the memories back. But he was pretty sure he could. His head still ached, and his mouth and nose were so dry it felt like his tongue would shrivel and wilt. But his wounds didn’t hurt anymore, and while the oppressive aura of decay wasn’t gone he had a bit more energy to fight it. “But… stand back a bit. The tree taught me something…” He’d felt it, through the ancient spirit’s body. The blade of light had gone through flesh and bone like dry leaves. “Dangerous.”

The Moki scampered to a safe distance. Ori held his hands out in front of him, and concentrated. It started with Spirit Flame… if he could just use  _ that _ again, he’d be happy. It was relatively safe, not like Charge Flame or Light Burst. It wouldn’t hurt the Moki, or anyone else who wasn’t trying to harm him. But when he summoned the power, it wasn’t working the way it normally did. The flames were too weak, too unstable. They scattered and dissipated like the very air was absorbing them, and Ori’s fingers started to go numb.

This wouldn’t work. He had to try how the ancient spirit had done it. Hold it in place, make the flame somehow hold  _ still. _ Compress them down into a single line, then  _ flatten _ it into a shape like a leaf. Harden it, and sharpen the edge.

And suddenly, the light felt solid in his hands, the same way a Light Burst did. It was just like how it had felt in the memory. The blade shimmered and wavered a little, but it was  _ real. _ He experimentally twisted his wrist, turning  it  over  in his paw , and then gently swung at a few stems of dead grass. Nothing happened. They just got pushed out of the way, and smoked a little. The blade shattered, and dissipated into short-lived sparks.

Right… it wasn’t like hitting something with a stick, it was a blade. He had to slice with it… no, that didn’t really work either. How had she done it? Large, powerful swings, but keeping the edge of the weapon leading, in a chopping motion. This time, it went through the stems like they weren’t even there. There was an amazed gasp from one of the moki. Ori let go of the power again, and breathed a sigh of relief as the blade vanished.

This power was strong. There was no doubt about that. Probably stronger than the Spirit Flame. But it was more dangerous. He knew the spirit who’d invented it wasn’t  _ him _ . Just because she’d used it for… it had to be evil, he couldn’t think of any reason for her to attack her own kind l ike that… didn’t mean he had to. But why had she shown him that? Why had she shown him the secret of this power? What was  _ she _ expecting him to do with it? Briefly, he had a thought of turning the blade on the tree itself. But it wouldn’t do anything. She wasn’t really there anymore, just a small piece of her Light. Whatever her reason was, she’d already paid the price for it. And he wouldn’t get far without this power. He knew that. Sooner or later, he’d have to learn to use it.

As it turned out, Ori got a lot more practice with the blade of light than he expected. A small army of corruptions – what the moki called the Decayed – had surrounded the clearing. They wouldn’t come close to the tree, but it was like they were waiting for him. Or the moki. He hadn’t thought much about it before because in Nibel there hadn’t been many other creatures left by the time Ori was able to fight them, but he knew they’d attack anything that moved. The moki’s answer to this many appearing at one time was apparently to just make a run for it. And even though they reassured him that they could probably avoid them and get to the safety of the treetops… if they didn’t… he couldn’t feel their emotions in their auras like with creatures of light and dark, but he could see the fear on their faces.

They were right. The corruptions  _ were _ drawn to his light. The moki had been watching over him. They’d found him lying next to the tree, unconscious, and waited while more and more of the monsters congregated. They were in danger because of  _ him. _ He couldn’t let them risk their lives trying to run, or fight their way through. Nobody was dying for his sake. Not ever.

He set his Soul Link near the tree, told them his plan, and made a run for it. Or at least, he pretended to. Really, he wanted the corruptions to chase him instead of the moki. It worked, but it worked a little too well. And the blade took some getting used to. After a few strokes it would shatter, half the time his cuts landed flat and the light only burned the enemies a little, and stabbing into into them didn’t kill them fast enough and got the weapon stuck. And if he didn’t kill the faster, frilled ones quickly, they’d be on him too fast for him to do anything about it. The moki soon learned the purpose of the Soul Link.

But by the time he’d cleared enough of a path for them to make it to safety, he was starting to get the hang of it. He didn’t know if he liked this skill. It wasn’t nearly as tiring as Charge Flame or Light Burst, and it didn’t hurt to use like Stomp or Charge Jump. He couldn’t get the blade to hold together very long, but really it wasn’t that different from Spirit Flame was at first with Sein’s help, and later when he learned to use it by himself. He just had to know how long it would last, when to attack and when to run. 

And it was certainly effective. It wouldn’t usually kill a corruption instantly, and often didn’t keep them at bay that well, but a few strokes could chop them into pieces. That was the problem, though. It was so  _ personal. _ It was all under his control in a way none of the other attacks he’d learned was. Spirit Flame would leap to the nearest foe like lightning to the Ginso Tree. With Stomp, once he started to pull himself to the ground, he was just along for the ride, tumbling inside a cocoon of protective energy. But the blade moved with his body. He could  _ feel _ the resistance hide and flesh and bone offered it,  _ feel _ the impact jar his arms when it struck a rock or tree trunk. And even if they were just decay and destruction given form, it still  _ felt _ like he was killing a living creature with it.

And as much as Ori tried to tell himself he’d never use it on another creature, there was always that little nagging doubt in the back of his mind. And as the day wore on it became not a doubt, but a certainty. He  _ would.  _ If that was what he needed to do to keep Ku safe, he wasn’t sure if he’d even hesitate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I gave the moki actual weapons because Niwen is a dangerous place. Even aside from all the spikes and stuff, it seems like most of the enemies in the game could kill a moki fairly easily. And sure, sometimes they could probably just avoid them because while moki aren’t as mobile as Ori, they’re still fairly nimble, but they’re still trying to actually live here and raise families. They’ve gotta be able to defend themselves somehow, and claws and teeth probably aren’t that effective against creatures made of poisonous slime.
> 
> For that matter, I lost count of the number of times I saw a Moki in an area of the game that was absolute hell for me to get to, and was like: “How the heck did you even get up here?” Multiple Moki characters outright said they’re not as mobile as Ori is. In-game, they’re usually showing up from outside the plane of gameplay, but the game being 2D is pretty clear gameplay-story segregation.


	9. A Little Braver

“Are you a spirit?” the moki asked. “I heard a rumor that a spirit fell out of the sky!”

“Yeah...” Ori said wearily.

“Then tremble, Sky-Spirit! You stand before Mokk the Brave!” He puffed out his skinny chest.

“Mokk the _what?_ ” Ori was confused at first. Mokk didn’t seem much different from the other moki he’d seen. He was a bit shorter, about Ori’s own height, and his voice sounded younger – probably a bit older than Ori, but not fully grown either. It was hard to judge when his own kind barely grew at all physically. Like many of the moki he carried a long stick with a stone point on the end, but… _The Brave?_ A smile tugged at the corners of Ori's mouth. It was the kind of grandiose title Ku would give herself as a joke, while playing. Well… not just her, Ori often got dragged into it as well. But he actually sounded _sincere._ “I’m… not really intimidated.”

Mokk deflated like one of the caterpillar-like corruptions at Ori’s lack of trembling. “I know. It is not very convincing. But I am brave! Or I would be, with a trophy!”

“A trophy?” Ori folded one ear. He hadn’t really heard the word before.

“Yeah!” Mokk nodded excitedly. “Like a… like a skull!”

“A… skull?” Ori took a couple steps back, a little unnerved. His gaze lingered on the long, pointed fangs Mokk’s smile revealed. “What would you want with a _skull?_ That’s, uhh… a little creepy.”

“I told you, a trophy! From a dangerous beast, to show how brave you are!”

“What, like a spirit? _Should_ I be afraid right now?” That seemed too ridiculous to believe, but after what he’d seen in the tree’s memory Ori wasn’t sure anymore. And he wasn’t interested in talking. It was past noon, and he hadn’t made any progress. Even in daylight, the swamp was a hopeless maze of places made impassable by thorns, pools of poisonous water, ground too soft to walk on, spirit gates, and corruptions. The other moki he’d met didn’t know anything about where Ku had fallen, but they did tell him someone who might. Kwolok. The Guardian of the Marsh. Great and Mossy, they called him, and they spoke of him the way creatures in Nibel spoke of the Spirit Tree. They’d shown him the direction, but it seemed like Ori could go any direction _but_ the right one.

“What? No! In awe, yes, but not afraid!” Mokk bounded alongside him. “I meant like a bog swallower, or a tree snatcher, or a spearhand! I heard the Howler fighting last night and somebody told me he died, so I was going to go to his den to look for a skull, but…” For a moment Mokk’s ears flattened, and he wrapped his tail around himself. Then his face lit up. “Hey, what about a Howl skull? Wouldn’t that make a perfect trophy?”

Ori turned around and gave him an incredulous look. They weren’t far from the skeleton-filled hollow, or from the place where the monster had attacked him. “That  _ really _ wouldn’t work,” he said.

“Yeah… you are right...” Mokk sighed. “A whole skull would be much too heavy. Maybe a fang?”

“That’s not why. First, I’m the one who fought him, and I think other Moki saw it. You wouldn’t be proving how brave you are, only proving you’re a liar.”

“Oh...” Mokk shrank even further.

“And he isn’t dead anyway.”

“He’s not?” Mokk gulped. He looked down the path Ori knew led towards Howl’s den. “Not even a Spirit could kill him?”

“He’s way stronger than a spirit,” Ori said. “I thought he was going to kill _me._ ”

“Oh. That is not good, I really hoped he was gone and wouldn’t eat any more Moki.” Mokk glanced back into the distance, at a cluster of rounded huts built on stilts over the dark water of the swamp. “But he ran away, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“You came from his den, didn’t you? Was he there?”

“Do you think I’d be _walking_ and not running if he was?” Ori rolled his eyes and kept walking, his tail twitching in irritation.

Mokk shrugged. “Okay. I’m going to go down to his den and find a trophy then. You’ll see!” Mokk confidently. But he didn’t turn around or stop. Ori scrambled up a tree to a high branch that led over a channel of stagnant water too high to jump, but the moki was still right beside him. He laughed nervously. “Umm… do you think you can go with me? To witness my courage? That way nobody will doubt Mokk the Brave!”

“Mokk…” Ori half-growled. He pressed a hand to his forehead. Why did it _hurt_ this much? The moki followed Ori out onto a narrower part of the branch just as he was about to jump. It bowed down a little under both their weight. Ori let out a soft yelp of surprise as his hoof slipped on a carpet of too-damp moss. He swayed dangerously, and was about to fall, but a paw grabbed him by the wrist.

“Careful!” Mokk tugged Ori back to safety. “Those feet are not great for climbing, are they?”

“They’d be fine if you didn’t almost knock me off!” Ori snapped. “Look, I don’t have time to babysit you! If you’re scared find someone else to keep you company!”

“I’m not afraid of it!” Mokk shouted with a suspicious amount of vehemence. I just… don’t want anybody to think I am lying, like you said! Not because it is dark, and spooky, and full of bones, and dead things, and… probably dead moki, nope, definitely none of those things!”

Ori sighed. He wanted to tell Mokk he felt the same way, that he’d been frightened even going through the place the second time. But he didn’t think it would help.

Maybe a howler fang wasn’t such a bad idea. Ori wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d hit it hard enough to knock a couple teeth out. And what harm would it really do?

* * *

  
  


“Wow… a real Howl fang?” Mokk’s pupils went from narrow to round in a heartbeat when he saw the tooth. It was the size of Ori’s hand. The moki hugged it to his chest, dancing from foot to foot and beaming. “No one will doubt Mokk the Brave now!”

“Careful, it’s sharp,” Ori warned. Ironically, not the part that was supposed to be sharp, but the part where it had broken off. He’d nicked his finger on a corner trying to clean the blood off with a leaf.

“This is for you.” Mokk dug something out of the pouch he carried slung across his chest, and tossed it to Ori.

“Uhh… thank you for the rock, I guess?” Ori didn’t really know what he’d been expecting. He hadn’t really been expecting it to be a trade at all, and he supposed a fang wasn’t really useful for anything either. The stone was surprisingly heavy for its size, and had a lumpy, reddish appearance, porous appearance a little like some of the rocks around Mount Horu.

“Not just a rock,” Mokk said. “It’s ore! The Gorleks used to use fire to turn it into shiny tools and things that were harder than stone!… But I think the Gorleks all disappeared when the spirits did. I have never even seen one, and our fires can’t change it. So, yes, it is just a rock,” he admitted. “But it is a pretty one, right?”

“Yeah...” Ori smiled. “It is.” He kind of missed the days when he could imagine himself facing deadly monsters, and braving the dangers of hostile lands far, far from home, and it actually sounded fun, instead of being something he worried about and tried _not_ to think of. When it was a dream instead of a nightmare. He’d felt like maybe those days were starting to come back. It was hard to get into playing pretend with Ku sometimes, but her curiosity about the world beyond Nibel had made him want to explore it with her. Someday. Maybe even now, just a little bit. Just a short flight to see where the geese were going, and they’d be back home by sunset. And then… all _this_ had happened.

Ori knew he couldn’t waste any more time – the place he’d found the fang had been yet another dead end – but the longer he stood there the less energy he had. He felt dizzy – he had for a while. It was kind of like he’d felt for a while after finding Sein, until he’d restored the Element of Waters, except without her light protecting him from the worst of its effects. No, it was more like how he’d felt before he’d died for the  _ first _ time. “Hey, Mokk?” he asked. “Do you, uhh… know where to find water around here?”

Mokk grinned, and gestured all around him. “We are in Inkwater Marsh. Water is everywhere!”

“Yeah, but, like… _drinkable_ water.” Ori was pretty sure the last time he’d drank anything was the middle of the night before last. There’d been some small pools and puddles during the storm that seemed clean enough, but now they’d all dried up. Only some of the water here was _obviously_ poisonous, but it all smelled funny, and Ori was still terrified of taking a sip if he didn’t _know_ it was safe. Bleeding to death from the inside of his throat and stomach – if he’d even bled to death and not just drowned in it because he was too weak to hold his head up – wasn’t something he ever wanted to experience again.

“That’s a bit more tricky… the water by our village used to be good, but this year it’s, well...”

“This?” Ori had found Mokk near the banks of a small pond. He pointed at the water. It was dark, and choked with grayish weeds. Sharp, pointed tree roots pokes above the surface, and Ori was sure there were more lurking below. A few bubbles rose to the surface. It smelled like something had died, been left out in the sun for a few days, and _then_ been thrown in.

“Yes. This is worse than our stream or we could not live there at all, but we cannot drink it anymore. But there is a spring not too far away that still has clean water. Come on, I’ll show you!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Mokk, you little dork! I love this guy. He strikes me as being a kid or early-teen equivalent at most, so I decided to roll with that. Initially I wanted this scene to just be Ori getting creeped out by the idea of taking a trophy from the corpse of a slain enemy, but it kind of expanded from there.
> 
> Inkwater Marsh has mostly safe water in the actual game. However, again, Ori has free access to the Z axis, and Inkwater Marsh is a wetland near the coast so the topography can’t be that mountainous, and it doesn’t seem as, uhh, thorny as Thornfelt Swamp. So something has to block him from just walking around all the obstacles.
> 
> Also, Inkwater Marsh is Not. A. Marsh! I don’t want to bog things down with pedantry, but marsh is the term for wetlands that aren’t dominated by big trees. Although there might be brackish or salt marshes by the coast!


	10. The Trees and the Weapon Master

Ori wasn’t exactly surprised to find another Ancestral Tree in this place. It made sense – he knew there had been spirits here in the past, and that something –  _ something –  _ terrible had happened to them. It wasn’t too far from the first, the one that had shown him the blade of light. And in spite of his fear of how the flash of memory would end, he was actually hoping that this one belonged to the other spirit he’d seen in the vision – the one he’d hunted, chased, fought, and mortally wounded through the eyes of another. Reliving her death wouldn’t have been easy, but he was hoping she could give him some clue to why it had happened.

But instead, the spirit who now rested here felt almost disturbingly familiar for a different reason. He was young, barely old enough to use Spirit Flame on his own, and a little clumsy with it. A lone, frightened spirit, exploring a blighted forest, fleeing Corruptions he wasn’t strong enough to fight. But he weaved around them effortlessly, rolling and leaping and changing direction sharply in midair. No, not changing direction –  _ jumping _ off the air.

This power was disappointingly familiar to Ori. It was the same one Leru had shown him down in the depths of the Moon Grotto, although some of the other Ancestral Tree spirits had known it was well. But he was doing it a little differently, concentrating the power first in one leg, then the other, making the movement less sharp. Something felt  _ off _ about it, though – something with his foot. It took a minute to figure out until Ori noticed how soft and quiet each step was, even on rocky ground, and he glanced down at his ‘own’ feet and saw not hooves, but paws, with toes that the ancient spirit was splaying out like he was trying to catch more of the air with them.

Ori could tell that the spirit was looking for  _ something _ , but whatever it was, he didn’t find it in the caves. He seemed to know a skill like Tatsu’s, one that let him easily climb up the stickiest and slipperiest of surfaces… until he didn’t. He leaped onto a wall covered in slick flowstone, but in midair a sharp spike cut his arm, and when he landed, his claws slid uselessly. He glanced at his wrist, and even though the wound wasn’t bad Ori felt a burst of terror, of pure panic. The spirit braced his paws against the wall, ready to jump, but something caught his ankle and he found himself upside down, bouncing and rolling. The midair jump saved him, but the stalactite he landed on wouldn’t bear his weight. It snapped, carrying him down to a bed of already fallen ones. The last memory Ori got from the tree was of struggling to breathe, choking on blood in a broken body that couldn’t move from the bed of jagged, irregular blocks of stone on which he lay.

Back in the present, Ori found himself in a cave that was different from the one in the memory. It had collapsed and become open to the outside, and soil and the Ancestral Tree’s routes had mostly overgrown the stalactites. Plants and lichens covered the walls, and he could at least climb them with Fil’s wall jump. The midair jump took a few tries to get right, and Ori was nervous it wouldn’t work at all with his hooves, but the gentler motion, and only concentrating the power in one leg at a time, turned out to be the missing piece of the puzzle. He still couldn’t move as freely as he was used to, but he’d gotten halfway up the Ginso Tree like this. Well, that and Charge Flame, but he didn’t have much hope of figuring that out.

But why had the spirit’s  _ other _ ability suddenly failed him? The spike had hurt, but it shouldn’t have done  _ that. _ Maybe stopped him using that hand at the worst. Then he remembered something. A little stone, made of clear, blue-tinted crystal, had been tied around his arm. Had the cord broken? And what did that have to do with it?

  
  


He found the stone on a rocky ledge, high up on the cave wall. He could feel a faint light coming from it, a little bit like a keystone. It was strange, like when he held it it was… seeping into his body, like its power was merging with him. He tried it on the wall on the way back down, with the stone clenched in his fist. Even with only one hand free, he could hold on.

Ori solemnly placed his hand on the bark of the Ancestral Tree. Its light was dimmer now, like it had used the last of its strength to pass on the memory. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. This spirit hadn’t been at peace when he died. None of them had, really, but with some of them, like Leru and Ilo and Sol, he’d gotten a sense that they knew they still had one last thing they could do for Nibel. He’d visited some of them after it was all over, and they at least seemed more peaceful now. They were still waiting, to pass on their knowledge to the next generation of young spirits. But both of Niwen’s trees weren’t like that. The spirit of the blade’s life had ended in the blink of an eye, without giving her a single moment to think about her death, but there was still sorrow and regret in her aura. This one though… there was nothing but fear, and frustration that it had ended this way.

That could have been him. That could have been how his life ended if someone else had been torn from the Spirit Tree’s branches by the storm and fallen into Naru’s arms. That would have been how it ended a hundred times if he hadn’t had the Soul Link’s protection. A simple accident, a simple mistake.

He looked at the stone in his hand. The cord had long since rotted away. He thought about leaving it there with its owner. But it wouldn’t do him any good anymore. Maybe there was a reason he’d shown Ori the terror he felt when the cord broke.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I don’t know what you want me to do with these… or if I can. But I’ll… I’ll try to use them well.” He turned away, blinking back tears, and began his search anew.

  
  


* * *

  
  


There were Spirit Wells in this place, too, which didn’t surprise Ori either. Or at least, there was the one that he’d found. Mokk’s people, the Howling Groves Tribe, had shown it to him. Its shape was blockier than the ones he was used to, but its comforting aura felt the same.

Only it was weak… so weak… Ori was hoping he  _wouldn’t_ have a reason to use it, but life had other ideas. Life, and the stupid leaping mantis that had knocked him into the thorns. The wounds weren’t that deep, but one above his eye had swelled so much it made it hard to see. There were life shards – both from the plants and sometimes among the little fragments of life force trapped in the bodies of the corruptions – but it seemed like as fast as he found them, he’d get injured again. The Spirit Well fixed his eye, eventually, but it took so long that the sun was getting low in the sky. And that was with a fairly minor injury – how long would it take to heal serious ones? The Moki weren’t creatures of Light, and while the Well healed them too, from what they said it sounded like it was just faster than waiting for a wound to heal on its own. And yet, there’d been fights over them between tribes.

Ori knew he couldn’t risk setting or rekindling the Soul Link while injured again, not unless he knew he could actually heal it. At this rate he was better off just dying and coming back. He didn’t want to go down that path… but he couldn’t waste this much time. He didn’t have a choice.

At least, not until he found the third Ancestral Tree. It was actually in the same caves Tokk’s spirit gate had led him through. Seeing it almost made him wonder if he’d gotten lost and taken some side passage he’d missed, but the rocks around it were so familiar. It was the water that gave it away. The cave had been partially flooded with rainwater before, but now it was just over knee deep, with a few stepping stones that let him reach it. The water looked and smelled okay, but he wasn’t taking a chance.

Ori was more interested in the glimpses into this land’s past than he was what the Ancestral Tree was actually trying to teach him at this point. But the echoes of the ancient spirits seemed determined to hold on to their secrets.

This one wasn’t a killer, or even an explorer. Ori could tell that right away. She was a stonecarver. Ori almost laughed when he found himself painstakingly chiseling a groove, precisely drawn with charcoal, into an oddly-shaped stone he was almost certain would one day fit into a Spirit Gate. He’d almost forgotten that someone had to have actually made the things. She hoped  _this_ wasn’t what she was trying to teach him, though. They didn’t actually seem to do anything to stop the decay from advancing, and even if they could it was far too late now. Besides, he’d never really had the patience or the talent for stonework. Naru had tried to teach him, but he’d never gotten beyond making a few basic tools. Not like the ones this spirit was using. They weren’t stone, they were some smooth, shiny, cold-feeling material he’d never seen before.

He saw the spirit making repairs to the old wells too, though, along with some strange-looking creatures who had a dark aura around them that reminded Ori a bit of Naru’s. And it must have been there that she’d discovered something. The next little flash of memory, she had a thorn in her paw. She gingerly pulled it out, but the pad was still bleeding and sore. And then… it was like the light of the Spirit Wells, like the light of the Tree, only it didn’t have any source. It was like it was coming from inside  _her._ She pressed her finger against the wounded pad, holding it there for a long time. At first the pressure brought more pain, but it slowly went away, and when she removed her finger her fur was bloody, but the puncture was gone. It didn’t hurt at all anymore, even when she put her weight on it, but Ori could tell healing it had taken a lot out of her.

The first thing Ori did when the memories ended was get out of the cave as fast as he could. The spirit had died doing almost the same thing as him, just trying to take a shortcut through the caves in a rainstorm, and she’d gotten tangled in the weeds at the bottom and drowned. One moment of carelessness… and the burning, the panicked struggles using up all the air, the horrible painful cold water in their lungs… Ori had died the same way a couple times, back in Thornfelt Swamp, and he’d been nervous about all but the clearest water ever since. He never wanted to relive that again.

The healing worked, at least a little. It was slow, but it was at least faster than the Spirit Wells at closing cuts and punctures from thorns and spikes. But it left him exhausted, like using Charge Flame had at first. He’d still have to be very careful with Soul Links, because he wasn’t sure even this would be enough to fix the really bad injuries. Then again, neither had life shards.

* * *

  
  


“Come to see the view? Splendid isn’t it? The Wellspring in all her magnificence!”

“Who?” Ori looked around, confused. There wasn’t anyone else here, just him and the strange Light creature who’d just spoken. He stood twice as tall as a spirit, but had a sort of similar shape. He was covered in long, shaggy white fur, but his hands, feet, and face were completely hairless, and the skin was an odd reddish color which reminded Ori a little bit of bloodstains. Who was he talking about? Or was he talking about himself like someone else, the way Mokk the Brave had. No, he’d said _her_ magnificence, and the voice certainly sounded male. But strangest of all was the aura around him. He was like Ori, a creature of light, but it was a diffuse, hazy light, and not all that strong-seeming, like the sun shining through clouds. Ori couldn’t pick up on his feelings, and the creature carried a long, stout stick. He didn’t _seem_ unfriendly, but Ori kept a safe distance all the same.

The stranger laughed. “Not a who, a what!” He pointed off towards the sunset. It was close to dark now.

“But you said ‘her’...”

“Only a figure of speech. The Wellspring’s what they call the old mill.”

“Oh.” Ori looked out past the murky lake, and the Moki’s houses built on stilts over it. The great building was far beyond them, and silhouetted against the setting sun, but it was still so enormous he could make out some of the details of its shape. He’d seen it from the air too, he realized, but not well in the dark. “What do all those wheels do?”

“Well, nothing now besides gather moss!” the stranger said with a sparkle of humor in his eye, but also a hint of sadness and longing. “A whole generation or more of most creatures have come and gone since they last turned. There’s only a few left who remember it, like Kwolok and -”

He was interrupted, by an earsplitting,  _piercing_ screech. Ori’s fur stood on end and his body went stiff as a board. That sound…  _Kuro…_ no, not Kuro. Kuro was dead. But Ori’s memories took over, and he dived for the only cover within reach, under the rotting log. The noise felt like a lightning strike, piercing right down to his bones. He looked up with his ears flat against his skull, and saw a colossal shadow flap across the sky on ragged wings.  _Darkness_ trailed from it like a storm cloud. Even from this far away, even without being noticed, he felt the flying creature’s hostility wash over him.

Ori pulled himself back up onto the log, still shaking. The stranger mopped his brow. He’d flinched, but not taken cover the way Ori had.

“Whew! What’s old Shriek doing all the way out here? She hardly ever comes this far west! Something must have stirred her from her roost.”

“The storm last night, maybe?” Ori asked.

“Hmm… perhaps, but she doesn’t seem to like all the trees here. Seems more likely there was some threat.” He looked down at Ori and smiled mischievously. “Not you, surely? You look harmless. We should fix that!” He poked his stick in Ori’s direction.

Even though he knew he was out of reach, Ori jumped back. He landed in a crouch, tail lashing and sparks building up around his palms. Deep breath… deep breath… he wasn’t actually attacking him. Just pretending to. Did he think that was  _funny?_ A rush of anger filled Ori’s head. He balled his fists, and felt something solid take shape between his fingers. The blade of light. He stared at it in horror. He hadn’t meant to… no, he  _had_ meant to. He’d felt the impulse to make the blade appear and knock the stick aside, his reflexes had just already carried him out of harm’s way before he had the chance. But if he hadn’t… it cut through dense brambles and tree limbs and… animal limbs. He’d only wanted to hit the stick, not its wielder, but if he’d made a mistake… “I’m not.” He sighed, and let the blade disintegrate again. “Sorry.” The adrenaline was still sizzling in his blood from that horrible sound, and just from the sight of ‘Shriek.’ It was hard to convince himself that there  _wasn’t_ something trying to kill him.

But the stranger didn’t seem upset or threatened. “Impressive!” he said with a whistle. “Though I suppose I should have expected no less from a genuine spirit!”

“Really?” None of the other spirits he’d met were this twitchy, if nothing else.

“Yes. That was quite a well-developed Spirit Edge.”

“Spirit Edge?”

“Yes, that’s the name of the technique you just used.”

“It is?” Ori’s ears swiveled forward. His fear was pushed aside by curiosity. “How did you know?”

“I happen to be something of a weapons master myself. My name’s Opher.” Opher extended a hand. Ori looked at it suspiciously, but didn’t come close enough to complete the gesture.

“I’m Ori,” he answered. “Did you know the Spirit who created it?”

“Good grief, no!” Opher laughed. “I know I’m old, but I’m not _that_ old! My grandfather met a few spirits when he lived here, but even then they were in decline. Everything I know I learned from him, my father, or from piecing together old writing. But I think that’s probably what the old spirits called it.”

“Oh.” Ori’s ears fell in disappointment. “So you wouldn’t know… never mind.”

“Know what?”

“Nothing. I just… I learned it from an Ancestral Tree, and I don’t know what it was called.”

“An Ancestral Tree, hmm?” Opher ran his fingers through the fur under his chin. “Would you mind showing it to me again?”

“Uhh...” Ori closed his eyes for a second. There was nothing to worry about… it was still under his control. “Yeah, I guess.” But he made sure that Opher was well out of reach before he materialized the blade of light again.

“Interesting.” Opher examined the weapon. “Almost straight, but the leaf shape gives it a curve, and a very fine point. I assume it can thrust as well as cut?”

“Yeah, but it sometimes gets stuck.”

“You must have had a better teacher than my grandfather.” Opher extended one arm. Light shimmered around his hand, and slowly materialized a similar blade. It was longer, and wider, with a backwards curve and a blunter tip more like a square.

Ori’s mouth hung open in amazement. In spite of his nervousness he crept closer. “You can  _do that?_ I thought only spirits could use the light like that!”

“There are other creatures of light in the world besides spirits.” Opher’s blade flickered and went transparent. There was a strained look on his face, and he released a breath and let the weapon disintegrate. “But you can probably use it much more effectively than I can. I had the idea of giving the Spirit Edge a sharper tip myself, back when I was young, but it was too fragile and unstable. And I’m a bit out of practice with it these days. It takes too much energy compared to this.” He patted his stick and twirled it in one hand.

“Does that… work?” Ori explained how he’d used a burning branch before, but without much effect.

“The Spirit Edge will kill one of the Decayed much faster,” Opher admitted. “A hundred, not so much. And the way I see it, if they get close enough for you to use it, the best weapon is one that won’t stop existing if you’re too tired or injured and your concentration is broken, and lets you save your energy for escaping.”

“But you can’t make another one if that breaks,” Ori pointed out.

Opher raised an eyebrow. “Can’t I? If I were to break this, what would I have? Two shorter sticks. Besides, every weapon and technique has weaknesses, so you should never rely on just one. If my staff breaks, maybe I  _can_ use Spirit Edge, but if I’d been using it the whole time I might not have the strength.”

“Oh.”

“So...” There was a gleam in Opher’s eye. “Do you know anything besides Spirit Edge?”

“I used to.” Ori let the Spirit Edge disintegrate and produced a couple sparks of Spirit Flame that went out barely a tail’s length from his hand. “There’s something about this place, though, like it’s sucking away my power. None of the skills I knew before work properly.”

“Hmm...” Opher sat down cross-legged. “We should fix that. As I said, I’ve picked up several Spirit Weapons over the years. I could teach you to use some of them, for a fee. But I’ll give you a discount on the first one since you’ve shown me what’s probably a more authentic version of Spirit Edge.”

Ori already had some idea of what the ‘Fee’ was. Niwen apparently had no map stones, but the Blackgrass Lake Moki had led him to Lupo, a strange lizardlike creature who called himself a cartographer. In a way, his maps were better than the map stones, because they were drawn on rolled-up sheets of bark paper and could be carried around. Ori wasn’t good at reading them, though. The script had some characters in common with Nibel’s, but it was different enough to be hard to make out, and at first he’d tried to read the map upside-down until Lupo told him that North was supposed to be at the  _top_ . The cartographer had traded the map for what he called Spirit Light, the residual life force that was trapped inside the bodies of corruptions and released when they were killed. Apparently many of Niwen’s creatures could use it to strengthen or nourish themselves, and would trade it for food, access to water, tools, help, or information.

Ori knew he didn’t have time to waste trying to figure out new techniques he wouldn’t need. But the more he explored, the more dangerous Niwen seemed to get, and he  _really_ didn’t have time to waste getting hurt or killed over and over because he  _didn’t_ know what he needed to get through. What he knew now wasn’t that different from what had gotten him halfway up the Ginso Tree. But he’d had Sein’s guidance, and it had taken  _days_ . And without Reem’s redirection technique, he wouldn’t have made it any farther.

* * *

“The Spirit Edge is a versatile technique to start with,” Opher explained. “As I’m sure you’ve noticed, it’s fast and lets you easily cover opponents on either side.” He spun his staff in both hands. Ori was currently holding a lighter stick – something safer to practice with. He raised it to block where the staff was coming. Opher was moving it intentionally slowly, but at the last moment threw his full weight and strength into the blow. Ori saw it coming in time, and tensed, but the hit was too hard. The stick was sent clattering across the clearing, and Ori was spun around and almost knocked off his feet. He stumbled, then bolted. He made it to his weapon before Opher did, but he wasn’t sure how hard his teacher was actually trying.

“That wasn’t fair.” He narrowed his eyes, picking the stick back up and retreating out of range. His hands hurt like he’d caught himself on a rough rock face after a long fall. A couple tree stumps to the left, he could climb those to get a height advantage and jump back off if he was pursued. But Opher relaxed, leaning on his staff.

“Neither is fighting,” he said. “I just showed you the Spirit Edge’s weakness. Now, tell me what it was.”

“You didn’t show me anything besides that you’re bigger and stronger than me. And you were aiming this far above my head.”

“Yes, because if I didn’t I would have hit you.”

“Whatever. Corruptions don’t hit that hard, or that fast, or have that long a reach, or have weapons. And I’m not going to use this on – on you, or moki, or other spirits!”

Opher rolled his eyes. “I think that’s up to whoever decides to try to kill you, but that’s beside the point. Don’t just think about me or the staff, think about the  _principle._ Why couldn’t you defend yourself – aside from sloppy technique?”

“Because you hit too hard – _and_ because we’re fighting with sticks, so hitting this didn’t hurt your hand.”

“See, now you’re finally using your head!” Opher tapped his own. “The Spirit Edge is fast, but it’s too light to knock larger opponents aside – especially in your hands. It’s deadly against bare flesh, but it doesn’t have the raw power to get through thick hides or shells!”

“...oh.” Now Ori felt like an idiot, because he _had_ fought Corruptions like that – the first one he’d ever encountered even. Their charges were easy to jump over or sidestep, but they were too heavy to throw into the air, and Spirit Flame couldn’t get through their shells without breaking through them with Charge Flame or Stomp first. Then there was a blur of motion. He saw the pebble coming at him, tried to use Reem’s power on reflex, and got hit in the forehead. “Ow! What was that for?”

“Defend yourself!” Opher flung another pebble at him. Ori swung wildly at it with the stick, but missed completely. It smacked him on the shoulder, not hard enough to really hurt him but hard enough to sting. 

“Okay, I get it, cut it out!”

Opher picked up a third pebble. Ori snarled, and a few sparks licked at the stick in his hands. Before his teacher could throw the rock, Ori lunged, flinging the stick in front of him as hard as he could. Opher knocked it aside with his staff, but that left him open. Ori slid low to the ground and moved his hands in a wide, sweeping arc, trying to imagine a harmless bundle of reeds between them. But a couple of sparks leaped from his fingertips. He jumped back again, and his knees buckled under him. He felt sick.

“Are you all right?” Opher looked taken aback. “Did you hurt your-”

“Don’t come closer!” Ori shouted breathlessly. “Don’t – no – not myself – I’m sorry...”

“All right. All right, I won’t come closer.” Opher set his staff down. “That wasn’t a wrong move, you know. When you don’t have a defense against ranged attacks, your only choices are to use your own, run, or close in. And you caught me off guard; I’ve gotten so used to these that in the moment I forgot it was only imitating a Light Weapon. If you’d done that with a staff or spear in a real fight, you might have -”

“I _know_ ,” Ori said through gritted teeth. “I almost… I wasn’t trying to use it, but it was like my body wanted me to, and I thought about _not_ using it but that was still thinking about and I...” His voice quavered. Tears welled up in his eyes. “Don’t make me practice against you again! I can’t do it, I can’t!”

“Hmm...” Opher sighed and shook his head sadly. “I understand. Ordinarily I would say you need to learn more self-control before I can teach you anything else. But I know these circumstances are anything but ordinary. And you are different from other students I’ve had in the past.”

“Different?” Ori repeated. He’d already told Opher about Ku, and about his search for Kwolok.

“Usually the difficult students are the ones who are too eager to harm others,” said Opher. “Others are afraid to cause harm, and reluctant to use their power when the time comes – it isn’t easy to teach them to overcome that mental barrier, but it is at least less dangerous. But I have never met one like you.” His dark eyes stared into Ori’s, and for the first time Ori caught a glimpse behind the veil that seemed to be shrouding his emotions. Sadness, sympathy, curiosity. “You can use a technique you know is deadly so easily, with no inhibitions, and yet you are terrified of what you know it is capable of. That takes experience or training, but you told me you have never been taught like this, and you’ve clearly never had a skilled opponent to learn from. And your natural response is to fight like I’m trying to kill you.” His gaze fell. “At your age… whatever has happened in your past, little one, I am truly sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is, I’ve already achieved one of my goals for this fic and made myself cry with my own writing. The bad news is, it was with this friggin ancestral tree scene which I had no idea was even going to be that emotional at all.
> 
> This chapter is dedicated to all the fan artists who’ve been drawing Ori with paws for the last five years! No, seriously, not making fun of you guys. He looks adorable with them, and my new headcanon is that the offspring of the Spirit Willow all had paws instead of hooves! I figure each tree’s spirits are probably a little bit different.
> 
> Okay, I get that the Spirit Wells need to be, like… actually useful from a game mechanics perspective, but the Willow is dead. And also I did kind of want to get rid of Ori having instant healing. There are actual legitimate plot reasons for this, but also I’m a selfish whump writer.
> 
> Sometimes describing things in fandoms for really low-tech settings like this one is tricky. Even without Star Wars references the Spirit Edge is just a sword made of light, right? But Ori’s presumably never seen or heard of an actual sword, because Nibel has magic + magitech but in terms of actual physical items it’s mostly a stone age setting (incidentally, my headcanon is that the Gorlek Ore is actually just iron or something).
> 
> Quick sensitivity note since this fic might as well be called Ori and the Forest of PTSD at this point: I am totally aware that most people do not develop violent tendencies as a result of trauma. Ori’s extra messed up because he spent an extended period of time in an environment where literally almost every single living thing he encountered was trying to kill him, so he was constantly needing to defend himself with lethal force, and just as importantly basically never being exposed to situations where fight-or-flight was a BAD response apart from getting startled when a leaf fell nearby. Even in a war zone not everyone is an enemy. Plus, because of the way he learned all his abilities up until this point he just doesn’t know how to spar.
> 
> Then, he also has a deep-seated fear of losing his loved ones due to Naru’s death, and because of the memories he saw at Kuro’s nest he knows his powers are dangerous to Naru and Ku especially and it’s possible for someone with no bad intentions whatsoever to kill someone with them completely by accident, and he’s been struggling with intrusive thoughts about that for a long, long time.


	11. Great and Mossy

Ori didn’t really want another way to fight. What he needed was what he’d lost: the ability to  _ move _ freely. Opher had never heard of an ability like Reem’s, and he didn’t know any like Nir’s or Eki’s, but he did at least know a way of breaking through stone or wood barriers too tough for the Spirit Edge to cut through. Spirit Smash, he’d called it. It was, at its core, incredibly simple: just gather the same kind of compressed Light that made up the Spirit Edge, but instead of sharpening it, concentrate it all at the end of a handle to create something like a hammer. But it was heavy and unwieldy: Ori felt like the weapon was swinging him more than he was swinging it, and if he missed it threatened to wrench his arms out of their sockets. He could probably get through a wall using it like that, but not actually fight. But Opher taught him how to wrap the Light around and through his limbs, briefly shielding him from the force of the blows, and to anchor himself to the ground.

It should have taken weeks, if not months of practice to get it right, Opher told him in an astonished voice. But he wasn’t really learning it for the first time. They were both a part of abilities he already knew. The anchoring, the  _ pulling _ himself towards the Earth, was part of  Ta tsu’s, and the protective shroud of light was part of Nir’s. But put together… well, really that was all there was to Ilo’s.

Before, Ori had just copied what the Ancestral Tree showed him. He’d wrapped the shield around himself, curling up into a ball and even flattening his ears and tail so it could cover his whole body, and yanked himself towards the ground like a bent tree limb springing back straight. Back then he’d been grateful for it. It was the only way to break through fragile ceilings into caves, it could destroy the armor of the sturdier Corruptions without tiring him out as rapidly as Charge Flame, and it got rid of the slimes that made poisoned spines burst from whatever surface they hit. But he’d never liked using it. It left him blind, and dizzy, and even with the shielding it  _ hurt _ using it, especially because he couldn’t even control what body part he landed on. And Ori knew he could never use it the way Ilo could, not without Sein’s power helping him. He just didn’t have the strength.

But the way of focusing the protection into just one body part Opher had shown him could work on his legs too, not just his arms. He had to keep it there, and sort of use his legs like the handle of the hammer, compressing the light around his hooves, and make it only pull down on his legs too, so the rest of his body was dragged along with them and he could still see and balance. Then, at the moment of landing, kick out and drive all the force of the impact into the ground, and let the protection sort of ripple up his body as he landed.

At least, that was how he thought it  _ could _ work. But he was also pretty sure he could break his neck or his back if he didn’t do it right. A mistake would mean death, and a slow death at that. It was too risky to try it at full force if he didn’t  _ have _ to.

* * *

The sun had set behind the trees, but the sky was still light as Ori picked his way around the thorns and pools of poisonous water. The first patch of dry ground he found, he set a Soul Link and rematerialized the map he’d gotten from Lupo. If he was reading it right, he was near the edge. Beyond this he’d be lost again. Lupo had marked the way to Kwolok this far, but it sounded like not even the Cartographer knew what lay beyond. At least, not in detail. He had plenty of maps of other strange lands, but he said it had been a few years since he’d last returned to Niwen, and the land had changed so much all the old charts were badly out of date.

Ori would have preferred outdated over  _ nothing. _ He changed the map back into light. Liquid was trickling uncomfortably down his ear and into it, making it feel like one side of his head was underwater. One of the enormous mosquito-like corruptions had torn a hole straight through it, and it still hadn’t stopped bleeding. He shook his head, spraying tiny drops of blood everywhere. It still didn’t get rid of the feeling. He wanted to heal it, but right now he was afraid to use any energy for anything but moving the Soul Link further and further ahead. Further and further into the unknown.

The last thing he was expecting was a welcoming party.

There were only three  m oki in the little group, and they all looked nervous. Ori didn’t recognize any of them, but he hadn’t actually been to either of the tribes’ villages. Only one of them carried a spear, and it was a shorter one, not quite as tall as a grown  m oki. A shorter stick was lashed perpendicular to the haft close to the end. All of them had stone throwers, and long coils of rope.

“We saw where the little owl fell!” One of the small group of Moki announced. She shimmied down a tree trunk and jumped off, landing lightly on a tree root that arched precariously over bubbling, slimy-looking water. “Or where the wind was taking her, at least. Far away. Near the home we left behind.” She didn’t sound excited to deliver the news. She said the last sentence with the tone of someone announcing a death.

“Silent Woods...” another said with a shudder. “Pretty bad place to fall from the sky.”

“Are you saying there are good ones?” The third said, but he nodded and gave a harsh, nervous laugh. “You’re right, though. I can’t think of many worse places for a lost child.” The moki all had a slightly different accent than the others he’d met, a bit less formal and smoother, with words running together more.

Ori took a deep breath. It was fine… it was probably fine… he just had to keep telling himself that. “Can you take me to her?” he asked.

The first  m oki to speak winced and shook her head. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s too dangerous.”

Ori’s ears fell. “Oh.” He wasn’t surprised. Disappointed, but not surprised.

“But Kwolok is kind,” the moki said. “Kwolok can help!” There wasn’t much certainty in her tone. She said it more like a question to herself.

“Can you take me to Kwolok?”

The Moki with the spear laughed harshly. “If we could find him, we could!”

The female looked back at him with a slight smile. “We are looking for Kwolok too,” she explained. “Or, we know where he is, but the way is gone now. We went almost all the way to the Silent Woods looking for a new path, and that was where we saw your friend fall.”

“How did you know I knew her?” Ori asked. “Some others from your tribe found me near Howl’s den, but they didn’t know anything about Ku.”

The moki exchanged a confused look. “If they were near Howl’s Den they weren’t from our tribe!” The one with the spear was unwinding the wrappings on the cross-piece. It came loose, and he rotated it to lie flat around the haft, then wound the twine around it again and slung it over his back. “At least, I hope they weren’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“If they were caught that far into the Howling Grove Tribe’s territory, there’d be fighting, or worse.”

“They said they were the Blackgrass Lake tribe.”

“Oh. Well, they probably wouldn’t be in _as_ much trouble, then, but they still won’t be happy about it.”

“We are Owl Meadow Tribe,” said the female. She pointed to a cord around her neck that had what looked like a small black feather affixed to it. No, there was a hole through it in a place where there couldn’t be if it was real. Wood, stained by the water that gave the marshes their name?

“Well, Eema and I are.” The third of the Moki to speak carefully made his way down the tree. “Tann is from Threepines Tribe, but he’ll be Owl Meadow next summer when he and Eema are married, and she’s been acting like it’s already happened for weeks.”

Eema shot him a glare. “There  _ isn’t _ a Threepines Tribe anymore, Snesh. You can’t keep acting like… never mind.” She turned back to Ori, her tail tense and twitching rapidly back and forth. “Tokk said you might come. We can take you to  _ him, _ at least.”

* * *

“Well… he’s great and mossy, all right.” Ori said.

Tann grinned. “And the statue is pretty big, too!”

“I heard that!” Tokk called from atop the towering outcrop. “Moki these days… bah!”

Ori almost wasn’t sure the statue  _ was _ a statue. It looked more like a few boulders had been stacked on top of each other, and alcoves carved into it about where eyes should be so it looked a  _ little _ like a face. A face of what, he had no idea. It wasn’t anything like the statues Naru carved, or any of the other carved stone structures he’d seen in either Nibel or Niwen. But the sheer size of it was impressive. It was so big he wondered if the boulders could possibly have been placed there or if it was just a natural outcrop. He could easily have crawled into the eye sockets, if there weren’t a stagnant pond too wide to jump in the way.

Eema elbowed Tann, but had to hide a smile. “Did you find anything, Tokk?” she asked.

“Nothing besides a couple lever wheels over there.” He pointed with a foot. “Without any levers.”

Snesh climbed up to one and brushed away the vine overgrowing it. “It needs a pole to go in it. Hey Tann, can I borrow that?”

“If you’re volunteering to hold off the Decayed if you break it and we’re attacked, go right ahead.”

The spear turned out to be to too thin for the holes in the wheel  anyway , but Ori remembered there’d been a few long, straight poles that had been driven into the swamp. They went back, and Ori cut the top off one of them with Spirit Edge after the moki tied a rope to it. The pole fit, but it still took all of their weight together to make the old machinery turn. But it creaked, clanked, and a set of weathered stepping stones rose from the filthy water. It was corrupted enough that even touching the wet algae that grew on the stones burned his hooves. He scrambled up the boulders and reached Tokk at the top.

“Did you… find anything?” he asked. “With Ku? The Moki said they saw where she fell.”

Tokk sighed, and slowly shook his long beak. “I’m sorry, kid. I spent all morning searching, but there wasn’t any sign of her from here to the Dead Waterway. If she ended up in the Silent Woods like they said, I was looking in the wrong place, but… that’s as far as I can go.”

“What? But… they said it was dangerous, but you can fly, can’t you?”

“I can,” said Tokk, “But I’m not the only one. The sky over Silent Woods is Shriek’s domain, and she’s been in a bad mood all day. And if I catch _her_ eye...” He slid his wing across his throat. “I wish I could do more for you kid, I really do.”

“Oh...” The strength left Ori’s body. He sat down in the grass covering the statue. He wanted to beg Tokk to try looking again, somewhere, _anywhere._ But he couldn’t ask him to risk his own life. Not when this was all Ori’s fault. And the answer was disappointing, but Ori was almost relieved. It wasn’t the answer he’d been afraid of hearing. That he’d found her, but not alive. “So… I have to find Kwolok then? The Moki keep saying he can help, but I don’t understand how. They’re looking for him too, right?”

Tokk nodded. “Yeah. Of course, he may not be easy to find. The gaze of the Great Kwolok admits only the worthy – at least, so the legend says. But right now we don’t even seem to be worthy of getting past this statue.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the rumor’s that this statue hides a secret passage through the hillside. If it’s real it’s been sealed off long ago, but right now it might be the only way of getting through to Kwolok’s Hollow and the Wellspring Glades in one piece. I can’t make beak nor tail of any of the old machinery around here though, and since daylight’s running out I won’t be much use looking for another path. Might as well start making camp.” He indicated where his bag was lying up against a tree. “Come to think of it, this statue doesn’t have anything to gaze with, anyway. Some legend. Bah!” He chuckled dryly. “By the way… what happened to your ear?”

“One of those… giant mosquito things.”

“Ouch. Good thing it wasn’t your eye, I guess. But the Skeetos have a venom that makes wounds just keep bleeding – you’ll have to put a bandage on that. I think I should still have a bit of salve...” He started to rummage in his pack.

“Save it for someone who needs it.” Fine. If the bleeding wasn’t going to stop on its own, he didn’t have a choice. He took a deep breath, and used the power he’d learned from the tree in the caves. The wound was gone, but he still felt lightheaded. He had enough strength left for a Soul Link, but after that he’d definitely have to choose between setting another and healing any more wounds. This was probably as good a place as any.

“Whoa...” The moki’s mouths hung open. They’d joined Ori and Tokk on top of the statue. “Is that… fire? Why isn’t it burning the grass?”

“It’s not really a fire, it’s… it’s a spirit thing.” Ori didn’t want to have to explain it again. He was too tired.

* * *

“...That’s why the Moki call Kwolok their guardian,” Tokk explained. “He’s kept the decay at bay… kept it spreading past the Silent Woods.”

“You call _this_ not spreading?” Ori pointed to the thorns, the foul water, the slimes crawling along a distant tree trunk – thankfully out of range.

“Compared to other parts of Niwen? Yeah. Believe me, it can get a lot worse.”

“It’s gotten bad enough though,” said Eema. “The waters of our lake are dark. We cannot fish. We cannot swim. This season there’s hardly been any clean water to drink.”

Snesh nodded. “Not much food either. Most of the trees haven’t born any fruit or seed, and there’s hardly anything to hunt.”

“At this rate, we might not make it through the winter if we can’t find a new home,” Eema finished. “That’s why we’re seeking Kwolok’s help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhh, I've been waiting to introduce these characters for a while! I, uhh, guess I have my first OCs for this fandom now? The moki as a species needed way more love and development.
> 
> I think the reassigning controller buttons thing doesn’t really exist in-universe and is just an artifact of there not being enough buttons for all the moves Ori knows – it pauses time when you do it in-game, although in fairness so do the map and inventory screens. So Stomp isn’t totally part of Spirit Smash, but I have to keep coming up with reasons why Ori can now make the moves work. And Stomp is like… just imagine doing that in a fight in real life! Sure, Ori does a lot of flips and spins that a human couldn’t or at least shouldn’t attempt, but they mostly seem somewhat controlled. And then there’s Stomp, which is just… cannonball onto your opponent. How will you land? On your back? On your pelvis? On your head? On your neck? Who knows! And remember, there are spikes everywhere, including possibly below you, so I hope you were paying attention a second earlier because now you can no longer see! So, I had Ori modify the move into an actual stomp.
> 
> By the way, Tann’s weapon is basically a stone-age version of a boar spear; the cross-piece is there because otherwise a lot of Decayed will happily drag themselves up the spear than ran them through and tear you apart! It’s also made to be a bit more portable: the wide guard compensates for its shorter reach a little, but it’s made in a way where the guard can also be folded so it’s less likely to get hooked on tree branches.


	12. Through the Night

_ On that fateful night, when the sky was lit ablaze, I called out to Ori. Yet hope never came. _

  
  


The ground rushed up towards Ku as she fought desperately to keep from spinning and tumbling in the gale. The only thing keeping her from screaming was her mother’s feather clenched in her beak. She couldn’t let go. It was all she had left to hang onto. She’d been lucky, so lucky, for the wind to bring it back close enough to grab. She just wished that luck could have carried her back to Ori.

She couldn’t even tell how high up she was. She could see enough of the ground to know which way was up, but it was just a featureless black mass, with occasional reflections of water when a flash of lightning illuminated it.  _ Just fall, _ he’d said. She was trying, she was trying! She couldn’t just fold her wings, or the next thing she knew she’d be upside-down and completely out of control. But they were tucked as close to her body as she dared.

Something deep inside Ku screamed at her that she had to pull out of the dive  _ now. _ She obeyed the instinct without question, but if she stayed too high, the storm could pull her back into the clouds again.

Her wings snapped open much faster than she’d meant to. The wind almost tore them out of their sockets, and the air caught the left one too much. Spinning. Spinning. More lightning. The giant tree was silhouetted against where a horizon should have been, but it was turned on its side.

The feather was useless right now. Ku could still glide a little bit, but the awkward angle she had to hold her good wing at to keep from rolling over was agonizing. The wind didn’t want it to be half-open like this. But she was back under control, at least until another gust came.

Another flash. Treetops loomed out of the darkness. Trees! All trees! Nowhere to land! She pulled up immediately, and an updraft sank its talons into her, snatching her away from the  g round again. No! No! No! It would take her all the way into the storm! She forced her wings back into the same painful position. Just glide… just glide… it hurt, but just glide.

She was below the worst of it now, and the wind really was calmer, or at least less vertical. She could make out the shape of the land again. A few trees, a few small hills, but otherwise nothing but flat… she didn’t know what. She hoped something soft like tall grass, but not water. She didn’t know if she could even swim anymore.

This was still more like falling than gliding. But Ku’s wings were so tired… it was like all the crashes before, except she’d never gotten high enough for a fall to be that bad. She had to save the last of her strength for just before she’d hit the ground. Just a little longer, it was still coming up fast… way too fast! The wind was still behind her! She banked sharply, more sharply than she’d meant to. She was flapping her bad wing so hard it felt like her chest was being torn open, but it wasn’t enough! The ground rolled away and vanished. Ku felt herself spinning, going backwards, flapping frantically, and… a blow like if an enormous tree had fallen on her drove the breath from her lungs. Pain. Everything was pain. Bouncing, rolling, tumbling… darkness. Silence.

* * *

The first night they were gone, Naru slept fitfully. The second night, she didn’t sleep at all.

She’d been worried, of course, when they didn’t come back before sundown, or even before dark. Worried, and angry. There’d been some nights, especially in the months after the decay ended – after  _he’d ended the decay –_ when he’d disappeared without telling her or Gumo. And she’d been worried then, but she didn’t push the subject. Ori had braved dangers she could hardly even imagine. And after she learned that sometimes where he’d gone was the Spirit Well in the Sunken Glades, she was glad she hadn’t.

All of this had only happened because she’d tried to keep him from his real parents, hadn’t it? She hadn’t known – she hadn’t known the true purpose of the light filling the night sky, only that it was dangerous – but that didn’t change the fact that she was the one who’d set off the chain of revenge and destruction that Ori had described to her. It had taken her a long time to come to terms with that. She hadn’t  _known_ he was the Spirit Tree’s kin, but she hadn’t done anything to find out.

So Naru asked Ori to tell her where he was going if he was going to be gone all night, but she’d never made it a rule. She still didn’t know if he, or Gumo, blamed her, and she still felt lucky he’d come back at all.

But this was different. The only reason she’d let Ku go out of sight was because Ori was keeping her safe – and making sure she didn’t do dangerous things. He should have known better. But then again, owls were creatures of the night. Naru was too, by nature, but she preferred the warmth of the sun, and it was easier to see the details of her carvings by daylight. It had been such a long time since she’d lived by the old rhythm that she’d almost forgotten. Ku would have to learn to fly at night sooner or later, she thought.

But when they didn’t come back in the morning, or even by noon, Naru’s anger turned to fear. They wouldn’t be gone this long by choice.  _Something_ had happened. The Spirit Tree had seen them – through Sein’s sight, but they told her the last they’d seen of them was early in the morning, when they’d flown far beyond the Ginso Tree, out of Sein’s sight. Heading out towards the ocean.

She didn’t want to believe that was where they’d gone. All day, and all night, Naru and Gumo looked for them, following the coast to the West as far as they could walk. But their calls were always met with silence.

  
  


“They’re… probably all right,” Gumo said halfheartedly. “Ori’s found his way through much worse.”

“I know he has.” Naru clambered painstakingly over a boulder that was effortless for Gumo and his long legs and arms. She didn’t have the energy or the inclination to say much. “But… even if it were just Ori I’d be worried. But Ku...”

“I know,” said Gumo. What I don’t understand is… where would they be going out over the sea? It’s nothing but water out there until the other side of the world, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps they followed the coast too?”

“If they did, I hope whatever happened happened early or it’ll take phases to catch up,” Gumo said sardonically. Naru’s glare must have bored a hole in the back of his head, because he turned around and rubbed it sheepishly. “I mean… if they’re hurt, or in trouble, it’s better if they’re closer to home, right?”

“I suppose so.” It was almost dawn. The rocky coast was gray, and the sea brought a chilly mist over the land, but it was thin enough to see a ways. Naru stared at the pink, layered clouds in the northern sky. They almost looked like rolling hills. She could remember pretending they _were_ hills when she was young, the land across the sea…

Then she remembered. Naru stopped in her tracks. “Oh, no...”

“What?” Gumo had gotten a ways ahead, and was peering under pieces of driftwood like he might actually find them hiding under one. He cartwheeled back. “Did you find something?”

“No, I remembered something,” Naru said. “Stories from a long, long time ago. No, the sea doesn’t go on forever. There’s another land on the other side, far beyond the horizon.”

“Really?” Gumo raised a skeptical eyebrow, but he perched on a fallen tree, listening intently. “How do you know about it? You don’t strike me as the seafaring type.”

“Oh, I’ve never seen it myself,” Naru said. “But there were many over the years who called the waves and the sea gales friends, who sailed far out of sight of the shore, and said they saw mountains and enormous feathery branches rise from the water.”

“If they were lost at sea, I’d imagine anything would look like land after a while,” said Gumo. “Like those clouds.”

“Yes, but some of them said they’d _been_ there. And there were birds who traveled across the sea as well – they still do, just not as many with the power of speech these days. And they all spoke of the same things. A land ruled by a great tree, so enormous its roots pushed the land up into mountains, and it made the Spirit Tree look small. Although, in those days I suppose the Spirit Tree _was_ much smaller than he is now.” Naru smiled wistfully. It was still hard to believe that little sapling in the meadow, the one she’d helped the two spirits care for as a child, had grown so much. Nibel was such a different place back then. “They said the tree’s Light ran all through the land, to the ring of mountains that encircled it. And… there were supposed to be spirits there, and… I’m not sure if I ever really believed this, but the legend was, it was the ancestral home of the Great Owls.”

“Oh.” Gumo’s eyes widened. “Ku’s kind. Do you think she?-”

“I don’t know.”

“How would she know about it? You never told her any of this, did you?”

Naru shook her head. “I don’t know. She clearly knew how to fly even before she could do it. Perhaps she somehow knew where to fly.”

“Well… I suppose that’s good, isn’t it? If there’s another Spirit Tree there, and other owls like her, coexisting peacefully, they wouldn’t be in _too_ much danger, right?”

“No. I think they would. Like I said, those were _old_ stories.”

“Are you saying something changed?”

“Well… I don’t know. Not for certain. But I think so.” Naru sighed, and rested her chin on one hand. “A while ago, I think it was around one or two hundred years, the travelers stopped coming. At least, most of them did. Some of the seafarers still said they saw a great tree, but they called it something else. The _Ghost Willow._ ”

“The Ghost Willow?” Gumo repeated incredulously. “Naru, I’m sorry. I know you want there to be some sort of explanation, but this is just… it sounds like something someone made up to scare children. Or like several myths got mixed together. I know the Shau Mun believe the souls of the dead are carried across the sea by the wind… or they believed it, before the Blindness…”

“I know it sounds superstitious,” said Naru. “I wouldn’t have believed any of it myself, except one day, around then, I was on the shore looking for driftwood. I don’t think it was that far from here, actually. There was a raft washed up on the shore that had been broken by the waves. And tied to it… was a spirit.”

“A spirit?” Gumo’s eyes widened. “Did they know what happened?”

“If he did it didn’t matter. It was much too late by the time I found him.” Naru closed her eyes and grimaced. The thought of a similar fate befalling Ori… “He must have been drowned when the raft split apart. I think there was a storm a couple of days before. The gulls had already eaten parts of his body, but the Spirit Tree told me he would have recognized what was left of his Light, and no one had gone missing.” She paused for a long time. “For a long time, I thought Ori must have come from the same place. I was stupid and selfish not to find out for sure, but…” She pushed the thought aside. The past couldn’t be changed. “Never mind. The more I think about it, the more I think Ori and Ku must have found out about it somehow, and tried to go there. And if they did...” The words caught in her throat. “Then I think it was a terrible, terrible mistake. They’re in danger.”

* * *

Ku had the nightmare again.

She didn’t have it often – not nearly as often as Ori seemed to have bad dreams – but she’d been having it as long as she could remember, since before she even had words to describe it. It wasn’t quite the same every time, but usually she was in the cave, or somewhere near it, and it was nighttime, but all of a sudden it wasn’t as dark as it should have been. There was a light much brighter than the stars, much brighter than the moon. It was like pale blue fire, filling the sky, creeping along the ground, reaching and twining like vines. She could run from it, she could hide in the cave, but it always followed her, until she was huddled in her nest or pressed back against the wall with all the pictures on it. The light surrounded her, and got brighter and brighter until it was impossibly bright, much brighter and hotter than the midday sun.

Blinding. Burning.

Ku didn’t know what catching on fire felt like, and she didn’t want to ask because she was worried that Ori might actually know. But in the dream she could  _see_ her feathers dissolve into smoke, and if catching on fire hurt worse than what she felt in the dream she didn’t want to go anywhere near a flame anymore. And the fear kept rising, boiling, tearing her apart. Once, she’d sort of seen herself from outside herself, and the fear w as replaced with a horrific, heart-stopping burst of  _rage_ that was just as painful as the fire, burning her from the inside.

She wasn’t sure when she’d first realized it wasn’t  _really_ a dream. Maybe it was after she’d told Ori about it. The first time, the only time she’d asked him about it. She’d never asked again, because even though she  _knew_ he knew something he wasn’t telling her, the  _fear_ and worry that had shone in his light were unbearable, and oddly familiar. More recently, she’d realized why. The overwhelming terror she felt in the dream wasn’t just her own. The light itself was full of fear, and it was too much… too much like Ori’s.

That was the other reason she didn’t ask him about the dream, or about her mother, or her brothers and sisters anymore. She already knew. It wasn’t hard to put all the pieces together. Especially not after she’d flown close to the Spirit Tree. She wasn’t expecting anything bad to happen, but… Ori had gotten scared, and she knew why, but she also knew he was overreacting, and it wasn’t a danger anymore. But then, it was like… she knew the Spirit Tree could see them too, and probably feel their presence. And while Ori was practically shouting at her to stay far away, she’d felt a little burst of the exact same combination of emotion in the Spirit Tree’s light. She was already getting out of there, because it wasn’t like she  _wanted_ to  frighten her brother , not like that, but was the moment when she’d really  _listened._

  
  


This time, for the first time, she could fly in the nightmare. But no matter how hard she beat her wings, it wasn’t enough. The light was too fast. It followed her, snapping at her tail with the blinding flashes and deafening thunderclaps of the storm. It struck out at her, engulfing her again, and Ku’s wing feathers turned to ash before her eyes. She plummeted into an endless black abyss, smoke trailing from her wings. Deep, dark water appeared from the gloom, rushing towards her at breakneck speed as flames kept licking at her body. But she never hit the surface. Instead, she jolted awake, and was greeted with the distant rumble of thunder, and pain that was all too real.

“Oww…” Ku got up slowly, carefully putting weight on each foot to see if they would even support her. They barely did. Everything was aching joints and bruises and strained, exhausted muscles. She tried to spread her wings, but it was like they were made of stone. And maybe a tree had fallen on them too. She let out an involuntary cheep of pain. Broken… they were broken! No… not broken. She could move them a little bit, but her flight muscles screamed in protest and refused to respond after that. It felt like her wings had been ripped off and sewn back on.

She’d hurt herself plenty of times that summer in her failed attempts to fly, both from crashing and just from trying until her wings were so sore she could barely move them, but this was much worse. And even though she’d just woken up she felt so sleepy her head hurt, and hunger was gnawing a hole in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t have any strength left to fight the pain.

It wasn’t a get back up, dust herself off, and try again kind of hurt, it was a break down into tears and try to burrow into Gumo or Naru or Ori’s arms while they lied to h er and told her everything was okay until maybe eventually she believed them kind of hurt. Ku blinked away tears. But there was no one there.

“Ori?” She said timidly. She looked around, carefully at first, then more and more frantically, hoping she’d see even the faintest glimmer of his light in the storm. “Ori?” A flash of lightning revealed the shapes of bare trees through the rain. “Ori!” she called. “Help!”

  
  


But she was completely and utterly alone, in a way she’d never been alone in her life. He’d fallen. Even with the safety line connecting them, he’d fallen away into the blackness. “Ori? Come on! Naru’s gonna kill us!”

She tried to push the thought aside over and over, but it kept coming back, like a biting fly that wouldn’t go away no matter how many times she swatted it. “Ori? Please don’t be dead...” Ku had given up trying to hold the tears back now. He’d told her he fell all the way from the top of the Ginso tree before, but… it was such a long way, without wings or the feather or anything else to stop him. She’d been so consumed by panic, so focused on trying to get herself back to the ground, that it hadn’t sunk in until now. He was the one who’d promised he’d keep her safe, but she’d promised she wouldn’t let him fall. She wasn’t sure if she’d said it out loud, but at least she’d thought it. And now she’d broken it.

“Ori… please… just come back!” Ku’s voice was already hoarse. She could barely hear herself over the rain. “I just wanna… I just wanna go home!” She couldn’t go home. She couldn’t go home without him even if good feathers magically sprouted from her wing. She couldn’t possibly face Naru and Gumo and tell them what had happened – what she’d done.

She had to convince herself that he was still alive. That he’d come back. But even if he did, they were trapped here, in this horrible place. The feather was gone.

It was a small miracle that she found it again. It wasn’t far away, caught in the branches of a leafless, lifeless bush. But the wind was tugging at it, and Ku knew it could pull it away again at any moment. And it was too high up, just a little out of reach. Too high to jump. Not too high to flap her way awkwardly up to, but it didn’t matter because her wings hurt so much they just wouldn’t work. She tried to bend the flimsy branch down so she could reach. It snapped, but the feather was knocked loose, and the cruel wind carried it off.

It wasn’t as windy on the ground now, and the waterlogged feather didn’t fly well, just bounced and rolled. Ku stumbled after it. If she let it get away, she’d lose sight of it in the darkness and the rain and never find it again and they’d be stuck here forever.

The hail had stopped, but balls of ice as big as acorns littered the ground and floated in deep puddles. And it was still raining. Ku’s feathers were completely soaked through and splotched with mud. She didn’t think she could get any wetter, or any colder. Soon she was shivering so much her beak clicked together. The ground was bare, with only a few grasses and plants clinging to live, and the storm had waterlogged the soil, turning it into a thin, clammy mud. Ku’s talons left deep prints, but they quickly filled in with rainwater. She couldn’t retrace her steps far, and she could barely see where she was going. All she could do was follow… follow the small glimmer of hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just couldn’t make the scene of Naru and Gumo actually seeing the Spirit Willow from Nibel’s shores work. Migrating geese fly around 40 miles per hour, and Ori and Ku were flying most of an autumn day. Even with them turning around, realistically they’d be covering such a long distance that the Spirit Willow would have to be literally several miles tall to be visible over the horizon. The Ginso Tree and Spirit Willow even being visible at the same time is honestly already kind of pushing it.
> 
> Fortunately, I have a trump card called “Naru is as old as the friggin Spirit Tree, if not older and Niwen’s only a day’s flight away in a world with sapient creatures that can make that journey very easily, surely she must have heard of it at some point.”
> 
> Also, imagine being Gumo or basically any member of a species with a normal lifespan and talking to Naru, and she just casually says “Oh the Spirit Tree was little back then” about stories from her childhood.
> 
> I can’t believe how much friggin’ mileage I’m getting out of the freaking “Light and dark creatures have limited psychic abilities that work with creatures of both their own and the opposite element” plot point. I originally did it to explain the flashback at Kuro’s nest, and so Ori would feel bad about collapsing a cliff face on Kuro’s head in Theme 6 of 100 Themes of the Blind Forest, but I just keep finding more possibilities that stem from it, both for giving characters information and giving them angst.
> 
> But yeah… that cutscene wasn’t triggered by Ori just being present at the nest, or from touching some random object, it was specifically when he touched Ku’s egg. I think she had to have somehow absorbed some of her siblings’ and mother’s memories. Ori got the full force of them, but for Ku they’re basically repressed and just appearing subconsciously as dreams.


	13. The Eyes of Stone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: I don't normally put warnings on individual chapters because the Archive Warning for graphic violence covers it, but if you have emetophobia you might wanna skip the last ~25% of this one.

Ori held his breath as he carefully aimed the glowing arrow of light high above his head. He drew it back, the bow and string giving it a little resistance. The plank he was standing on was unsteady, though, hanging from a couple of vines. He had to wait for the moment when it reached the top of its swaying motion, then send the arrow away. He waited a couple of cycles to make sure he had the timing right. One… two…

They’d found the lever behind the statue’s head completely by accident, clearing away some tangled vines to make a sheltered place to sleep. Ori had been sure it would open the statue, but instead, it drained away the water in the pond, and opened the path to the fourth Ancestral Tree.

This Spirit was unusual. She’d created the weapon Ori later learned from Opher was called the Spirit Arc by copying one made of wood and stone and string. Her memory gave him a glimpse of a large, four-armed creature with long, bushy fur using it. The spirit had tried it herself, but the weapon was too large and unwieldy, and trying to bend the stout wooden bow took even slightly took so much strength her arms shook with the effort. The version she’d made, the one Ori had learned from her, worked a little differently. The strength to make it work didn’t come from his arms, it came from the light he built up along the outside edge of the bow. It was supple while it was pulled back, with enough resistance to help keep the arrow straight. Then, he’d let go of the string and release the power at the same time, making the bow suddenly snap back to straight almost like a muscle – as fast as a grasshopper’s leap.

It was a complicated ability, one Opher said he’d heard of but had never managed to make work. It meant shaping his light in three different ways at the same time. The rigid arrow, the flexible but taut string, and the changing bow all had to be done correctly. Ori couldn’t keep the bow from disintegrating after every shot – the spirit of the ancestral tree could make it last for a few – and remaking it every time made it use up a huge amount of energy. But despite that, he liked it. The arrow flew where he pointed it, and it did so so quickly that its path only curved very gently. It was so much easier to _aim_ than Sol’s power had been. He could actually hit a moving target with it, or hit one that wasn’t moving when he was. Sometimes. A lot more consistently than he’d ever managed with Light Burst, at least.

Tokk, and Opher – who’d joined up with the party saying he was looking for the same place as them – weren’t keen on moving once it got dark. But they didn’t have the eyes for it. Ori and the Moki did. Their pupils flashed blue in the gloom when Ori’s glow caught them right, the same way Ku’s sometimes flashed red. But they’d split up a while ago, not long after Ori found the way to open the statue’s colossal stone jaws. He’d seen it in the spirit’s memories. It was still old and mossy back then, but there’d been two enormous stones that reminded him a little of the Water Vein in its eye sockets. Two big, heavy stones that whoever removed them probably hadn’t gone to the effort of carrying _that_ far off. Ori had almost passed out from the effort of dematerializing even one of them at a time and carrying it a short distance.

He wasn’t sure if the moki were still mad at him. Before they ventured down the throat of the forboding stone beast, the explorers had eaten the last of the food in their bags, and they’d insisted on giving Ori a share. But he couldn’t. He was starving, but as soon as he realized that this was all they had, it was like his throat closed up. He tried to tell them he wasn’t hungry, tried to say he’d already eaten earlier, even considered lying and saying spirits didn’t need food – he would have if Snesh hadn’t brought up the possibility first and Tann had asked why Ori had teeth if it were true – but they didn’t believe him even for a second. And they’d seemed so offended and hurt, and just kept telling him they’d be fine, and it was like his brain had just _stopped._ Everything was blotted out by a blind fear that was different from what he’d felt trying to practice with Opher. He kept frantically apologizing and backing away until the statue curved away under his hooves and he slipped and fell.

The bruises from that still hurt. He’d found more energy shards since then, but now he had to save his strength for the arrows too, and the injuries didn’t stop him from moving or fighting. Tokk had explained that to the Moki, refusing hospitality was a grave insult. He was trying to work up the courage to explain, but Eema said he didn’t need to say anything else. Ori forced himself to choke down some seeds and dried berries and roots, a couple of dry, crumbly discs that had a texture a bit like a very soft, crumbly rock but tasted more like pine nuts, and some water. But he’d felt queasy the whole time. They’d at least understood when he still refused the strips of dried flesh, but they’d been kind of quiet ever since.

He hoped they were okay, that they were… still alive. They’d parted on friendly terms. It was just some of the trickier places where mechanisms activated by light extended, but then retracted on their own after a few seconds, were too dangerous for them, and there were other places where their claws and ropes just couldn’t get them to the same precarious branches as Ori’s midair jump. On the other hand, the moki could risk wading in even the worst-poisoned water as long as it was shallow and just for a short time. Ori had already made the mistake of trying that a while before he met them. The burning hadn’t started off that bad, but eventually it got so intense it felt like the water was boiling, and then his legs had given way under his weight, sending him face-first into it. They had to find their own paths. But their torches had gone out, and Ori knew they only had so many sling stones.

There wasn’t another thunderstorm tonight, but clouds covered most of the sky and brought a gentle, but cold and depressing drizzle. The moon was still faintly visible through the clouds sometimes, but mostly the dense canopy blotted it out. There were occasional glowing plants and fungi, and smaller stone statues with glowing eyes that responded to being hit with pulses of Light, but most of the time all Ori had to see by was the light of his own fur – and that too had mostly been blotted out. He’d done his best to stay up high, but there were places where the trees were too far apart, or the thorns had taken over everything above the waterline. He’d had to wade or sometimes even paddle to the next bit of solid ground, chest-deep in stinking black mud that clung to his fur and drowned his glow.

He hated it. He hated it so much. He didn’t care if his light attracted the corruptions, he couldn’t stand the thick, clammy feeling, the _weight_ of it, the way his fur was stuck to his body, the slipperiness of his hooves and paws, and the constant odor of stagnant water. After the first time he’d died tonight, after he’d come back and he’d tried to tell himself that even though the pain in his chest wouldn’t quite go away and he kept holding his breath and wincing because he was _expecting_ the stabbing pain and the disgusting wet gurgling sound and the sensation of drowning that came from a punctured lung, at least he was clean and dry again, he almost cried from frustration when his path was blocked by another expanse of trackless quagmire.

Right now the only dry way forward was with the stupid tongue-statues. More than once he’d cursed Niwen’s ancient spirits for not building bridges, or stepping stones, or even just making the tongues stay out for more than a few seconds once they were activated. Some of them he’d actually had to shoot while sliding down a wall or in midair since he needed both hands to use the Spirit Arc. It was like someone had made it on purpose to send him tumbling into the swamp or onto thorns and spikes. But he had to admit it had forced him to get better at aiming in a hurry. And maybe that was what it was for. It was hard to even picture what it had been like before it had fallen into decay, but he guessed if the water was clear, and the spikes were gone, it wouldn’t have been too different from some of the streams and ponds around Swallow’s Nest. It must have once been a place where young spirits ran and climbed and played, and practiced using powers like Spirit Arc with the safety of a soft landing.

And now… now it was this. Ori was about to loose the arrow when he heard the familiar buzzing rustle of wings. His ears swiveled, pinpointing the source immediately. Behind him to the left, getting closer fast! He whirled around, shooting as soon as he saw the Skeeto. He was aiming for the center of its bulbous head, but the swaying of the platform threw the shot off. He was sure he’d hit it in the wing, but it kept coming straight at him! That was the one downside of the arrows being sharp. They’d just punch a hole through the wings and keep going. Eema and Snesh’s slings couldn’t skewer the flying corruptions, but they’d torn the chitinous wings from their bodies with a well-placed stone more than once.

Ori twisted out of the way of the deadly needle-like snout of the monster just in time as it whirred past, slapping him with his wings. There was a powerful, stinging blow to his right arm. He teetered on the edge of the platform, stepping back to safety just as it wheeled back around. But he heard more wings. The other side! Too close! He flung himself from the platform, sending it swaying dangerously to the opposite side. For a sickening moment he felt himself falling. He twisted around and jumped back to it in midair, but he didn’t have enough height to land on it and the rotted but still very heavy half-logs caught him in the stomach and sent him sprawling on the slippery wood.

He pulled himself back to his feet with one of the vines, gasping for air. But there was no time to recover, the first one was already coming for him again! He sidestepped again, lashing out with the Spirit Edge on reflex. The blow was timed right. The blade met exoskeleton and flesh, and they parted before it… but so did two of the vines holding the platform up. It fell out from under him, and before he could react the edge came up and caught him under the chin.

Again, the double jump saved him, and so did the Spirit Shard he’d found near where its creator had died. That was what the odd, shadowy creature named Twillen had called it. His hands were so slick it felt like he’d slide off for sure, and his hooves treaded thin air over the swamp, but the anchoring was just enough for him to hold on for dear life. The other one – he heard it, he didn’t have time to see it! He threw himself frantically to the side again, grabbing one of the remaining vines with one hand, but the Skeeto hit the platform so hard it nearly knocked it out of his grip. Its snout dug into the rotten wood with a solid-sounding _thwock._

The monster’s wings buzzed, and it pulled the platform back again, but it didn’t budge. It was stuck! Ori’s right arm felt like it had been pierced with liquid fire. He couldn’t swing it properly, all he could do was materialize the Spirit Edge again and stab it into the foul creature’s eyes with all his strength and twist. It screeched, smoked, and went limp. Ori scrambled back onto the platform and stood there leaning on the vines for support. His legs trembled, and he felt like if he let go he’d fall. But his arm… now he could see it, a broken off piece of a needle pierced straight through above the elbow. He touched it gingerly, and was unable to stifle a gasp of pain. When had it even happened? One of the charges he’d thought was a near miss must not have been.

 _Stop shaking… breathe… just stop shaking…_ why did it hurt this much? Why did he feel so weak? The spike had twisted in his wound too, the momentum of the corruption’s body wrenching it open until the tip broke off. Without thinking, Ori pulled it free. There was blood… lots of blood. Uh oh. Could he heal it? No, not right now. Not if he wanted to have the strength for more than a couple of arrows, and he _needed_ those. He could hear fainter noises of approaching Corruptions in the distance.

Try not to panic… try not to panic… he had time, he knew which way he had to go. He just had to wait a little for the swinging of the platform to calm down… or not.

“No, no, no, don’t jump at me...” Ori muttered. He could see the leaping bug atop the crumbling stone arch back the way he’d come. Not worth using an arrow to stop. They were easy to deal with on level ground because they were so predictable, but their shells were too tough for arrows. “You know what’s gonna happen, you stupid...”

But he knew it wouldn’t listen. He forced himself to turn his back on it and materialized the bow. He had to shoot the statue, and fast – no, it was right above him, it was too fast! He jumped out of the way, loosing the shot in midair and twisting around. Sure enough, the corruption crashed down on the platform far too hard for the remaining vines to withstand. They gave way, sending it crashing down into the mire with the logs on top of it. Ori knew he was about to end up in the same place. He was sure he’d missed, and even if he hadn’t it wouldn’t come down fast enough to keep him from falling. He doubled back, reaching out for the unattached vine. Safe! Safe! And he could hear the old stone jaws grind open and the pole descend from the ceiling. He almost couldn’t believe it. He’d actually _hit_ it?

But it was taking all his willpower not to clutch at his injured arm, to keep holding onto the vine. And he couldn’t reach the pole from here, not without footing heavy enough that it wouldn’t just push away when he tried to jump of it. He shimmied up the vine as fast as he could, wincing and biting his lip so hard he tasted blood. He needed more height! But it was already retracting, and he didn’t know if he could even shoot another arrow from this position! He had to jump _now!_

He had it. His hands brushed it. Rotten splinters bit into his palms and forearms, and his arm had its own miniature damaged Element of Warmth spewing lava inside it, but the spirit shard held him in place. Just. But as the pole retracted and lifted higher, all he could do was watch helplessly and wait to be pushed off. There was another one, below, that came out horizontally, that he’d have to reach if he was going to make it to the shore. He just needed one more arrow… needed to make himself let go… no, there wasn’t time, he’d fall!

Ori pushed off and shot the eye above him again. In his panic he only grazed the socket, but the pole changed direction again. He just barely made it back to it. Just one more… just one more arrow… he could do this… he could do this! He was almost at the base of the vertical pole, and slowly sliding down. He forced his sluggish, exhausted body higher, now just clinging to it with one arm and panting with the exertion. Just one more… It wasn’t a hard jump, he’d done jumps like this before. He just had to hit one easy shot… he let go, and let himself slide down. He stretched his good arm out in front of him and imagined the glowing blue bow forming in the air around him. But his fingers were burning, like the string was cutting into them. As he tried to draw it back, he flinched and the weapon disintegrated. Just… one more try! One more try! He caught himself again, but he didn’t have the energy to pull himself up. He just had to let it carry him as high up as possible, then jump.

Now. He pushed off, somersaulting in the air. _Don’t worry about the landing… just the bow… focus on the bow…_ It was wavering, but it was there. He didn’t have time to think about hitting the eye, just let the arrow fly where it wanted. The plank started to slide out towards him, the statue’s jaws rattling and squeaking.

But it wasn’t enough. His second jump carried him to where it would have been if he’d been quick enough the first time, but the plank was too slow. He reached out for it desperately, stretching his tail out behind them and trying to will his body to fall just a little bit slower. But it was useless. He had just enough time to flinch and shut his eyes before he plunged into the corrupted ooze.

The fall drove him below the surface. Thick, cold slime closed over his back and head. It was all around him – the decay was all around him, seeping into his fur. Icy tentacles of fear wrapped themselves around his heart. Even though he knew he could hold his breath, his chest instantly tightened. He kicked and clawed blindly, trying to find anything solid. He broke the surface choking and gasping and shaking his head violently in an attempt to clear the vile substance from his face. He could taste it, vile and oily and slimy and tingling and burning his mouth and nose.

Safety was just above him, but he couldn’t reach it, just watch as it slid back into the statue. He paddled after it through the foul black mud as fast as his aching joints would let him, and dragged himself onto the shore over a bed of half-submerged spiny roots. The ground was still soft enough to sink into, but he didn’t have any strength to pull himself any further. He coughed, and spat, and gagged, but the disgusting taste wouldn’t go away.

It had been dark before, but the darkness was almost complete now. He was completely covered in the sticky ooze, his light blotted out. His ears were weighed down so much he could barely lift them, and it dripped from his fur in thick ribbons. He wiped off as much of it as he could, but his coat was still matted into black spikes, and the drizzle was too weak to wash it away. He felt faint and dizzy, worse than the bleeding could explain. For a long time he sat there on the boggy shore, still submerged up to his ankles, before he worked up the strength to crawl up the short flight of stone steps to truly solid ground. He felt like he was going to throw up.

Ori didn’t notice the corruptions until they were almost upon him. His ears were too clogged to hear properly. The first thing he saw was the glowing yellow ball of slime falling towards him. He rolled aside, barely avoiding it, and scrambled back to his feet. A fresh surge of adrenaline gave him a little bit of strength, but his legs still shook as he stared into the dull, soulless eyes. There were at least a dozen of them – Skeetos, leaping bugs, Spittle-slugs, and a few slimes creeping down the trees and ruined stone walls. Another projectile splattered against the stones. There were too many to fight at once, and he couldn’t go back the way he’d come. He didn’t even try creating the bow again. It was too much… it would just fall apart.

The monsters didn’t seem to have any kind of ability to communicate or coordinate, but when one lunged the others that were close enough soon followed. Ori fended off the first couple of Skeetos with the Spirit Edge, but they just kept coming. Soon he was running this way and that, unable to make any progress past the wall of Decay-ridden flesh. One of the leaping bugs, this one with an unusual red color, crashed down barely a tail-length from where he stood. He thought it had missed him, but then pain shot up his legs like a thousand spines being stabbed into him all at once. He staggered away with an alarmed cry, nearly bumping into another one. Fire… a ring of red fire surged from where it hit the ground. It leaped again. He avoided its body, but had to use his second jump to stay above the flames, and a Skeeto almost skewered him. The Spirit Edge barely cut through the leaping bug’s tough shell, and even after a blow from the Spirit Smash that almost pulled Ori off balance and down the steps again broke one of its legs off, it didn’t go down.

If there was ever a time to try the new shielding technique, this was it. He hadn’t had the nerve to before, but without Bash, Charge Flame, or even Spirit Flame, he didn’t have any other way to fight so many at once. He copied the mantis-like corruptions, leaping high into the air as another Skeeto whizzed by underneath him, brushing the tip of his tail. _Now._ The same somersault, but pull out of it instead of curling up. Straighten his legs and back… concentrate his light in his hooves… and reach out with it towards the Earth and pull it towards him with all his strength.

But he’d forgotten just how _fast_ Ilo’s power could yank him out of the air. Trying to aim it, it felt like being turned upside-down and shaken. He panicked, tried to bring the power up through his back and head, but it all happened too quickly. The next thing he knew he was sprawled on the stones with his head ringing like a bell and his vision split in two. Stunned. What? Had he broken his neck? No, he could feel… something. Then the pain hit him, and he _wished_ he had broken his neck.

A white-hot explosion of agony ripped through Ori’s body, driving his breath from his lungs as a scream. At first, he thought he’d just been cut or stabbed by the broken pieces of the corruption’s shell, but as he dragged his hooves free of its broken body it became clear that wasn’t it. He tried to get up, but his legs crumpled uselessly under his weight, and _somehow_ the pain got even worse. He couldn’t even take a breath for a while, and when he did it came out as a sob. He didn’t care about trying to stay quiet anymore, not with every corruption a mile around already trying to kill him. His legs weren’t even the right shape anymore, and blood was rapidly mixing with the mud and the green goop that was inside the leaping bug’s thorax.

Broken. Broken so badly he wasn’t sure if even the Spirit Wells in this place could heal them. He couldn’t run, or jump, or even walk, and there were still more of the foul creatures closing in on him.

“No… no… no!” Ori choked out. “I don’t wanna… don’t wanna die!” He knew there was no one there to hear him. Somewhere, some part of his brain was telling him he’d come back, but it was quickly drowned in the flood of pain and terror overwhelming his mind. He backed away as far as he could, to the very edge of the steps, and when they got too close he lashed out with everything he had, hissing and snarling and slashing through wings and eyes and bodies. The blur of light imprinted itself on his eyes. Just a couple… just a couple left. He rolled back and forth, avoiding the balls of false-light from the last spittle-slug, and struck at it again and again and again, hacking through its rubbery hide and opening deep, horrifying gashes. It collapsed. He stared at it, almost in a daze, as it groaned and started to swell up. Then he remembered too late what spittle-slugs did when they died.

Ori couldn’t get out of the way, not with his legs like this. All he could do was try to shield his face as the corruption’s bloated abdomen expanded and burst, showering him with putrid entrails. Pale, maggot-like worms writhed in the slime and gore. Ori’s stomach tried to do the same thing. A wave of nausea overtook him, and the meager meal he’d shared with the Moki came back up and spilled down his chest. He collapsed, shuddering and still retching so hard it felt like being stabbed through the belly. He was dimly aware of the remaining corruptions closing in on him, but he couldn’t concentrated enough to form the Spirit Edge anymore. All he could do was try to crawl away until the ground wasn’t under him more, and he tumbled painfully down the steps back into the mire.

“Stop… please just stop...” All the ones that were left descended on him, heedless of how they endangered themselves. Most of them couldn’t swim either, and they crushed and impaled each other with their own attacks, but Ori was trapped under a pile of writhing chitinous limbs and tumorous, decay-ridden flesh. He kicked and clawed and screamed, but their weight forced him deeper and deeper into the dark mud. He was going to die. He was going to drown, or – or be eaten! Slavering mandibles tore into soft flesh.

“Help!” Ori choked out. One last, desperate effort with the Spirit Edge had finally jammed it down the throat of the last leaping bug, but it was pinned to Ori by the beak of a Skeeto. He couldn’t push them away anymore. He was sinking under their weight, and he could see, and feel, dark slimy things from the depths of the swamp crawling over his body. Leeches. As they started to feed, white light lit them up from the inside, and the last of Ori’s strength slipped away. “Somebody… Sein! Please! Help… Naru… Gumo… anyone… I can’t...”

Those were the last words he said. Then darkness overtook him, and the stinking mud closed over his face. His last memory was of struggling for breath until the burning in his lungs drew too strong, and inhaling something far too thick to possibly breathe.

  
  


And then it was over. It was all over. He was lying doubled over on his side on the little hummock where he’d put the Soul Link last. Damp grass was already getting his fur wet again, and his body wasn’t ready to accept that it was alive. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he coughed and spasmed, trying to clear nonexistent liquid from his lungs. His legs still hurt so much they’d almost crossed back into being numb, and the adrenaline and fear were still surging through him. He tried to stand up, the blood rushed from his head, and he doubled over and threw up his dinner a second time. He didn’t know if it was actually _worse_ when there was something in his stomach besides water.

He was alone. All alone, in the middle of the swamp. Ori looked around at the gloom and darkness, imagining lifeless eyes staring back at him. He tried to tell himself not to cry, but the tears came anyway. He missed Sein. He missed her so much. He missed coming back to her soft, comforting glow. He missed her reassuring voice beside him, telling him it was going to be okay, that he wasn’t hurt anymore, that it was okay to take a rest before getting back up and trying again. Only it wasn’t okay this time, because Ku was lost and alone too and he had to find her, but… he just wanted someone, anyone, to _make_ it okay.

But it wasn’t. So even though the shaking hadn’t stopped yet, and his arm still twinged when he lifted it, Ori forced himself to stand again, and stagger out into the darkness once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been focusing a lot on Ori’s emotional turmoil and to some extent on the inevitable deaths this fic, but not really gone into much detail. But I feel like I’ve been long overdue for a good old “Torture Ori as much as possible” chapter! Welcome to Ori and the Terrible Horrible No-Good Very Bad Day. I’m sure everyone’s had those moments in this game where you get yourself into a horrible situation and try so damn hard to avoid dying, and ALMOST get away with it, but then die anyway.
> 
> Fun fact: In my Word Doc I write this fic in this chapter is Number Twelve because I didn't give the prologue a number, but in Ao3 it's Thirteen... an fittingly unlucky number for Ori tonight.
> 
> More effects of everything Ori went through in Blind Forest: he CANNOT be the one to take the last piece of food, at least not if more isn’t readily available because he’s afraid that if he takes food someone else could have had, could have needed, that they’ll starve to death. This is one of those things where nobody could tell how bad an issue it was because Naru and Gumo knew why he was acting like this so they weren’t going to push it and there hasn’t been a genuine shortage since the blindness. But then those moki were like “Yeah, our village is in serious danger of starvation and we might not survive the winter” and then tried to share a meal with him, and this poor child was thrown into “No I cannot eat three raisins and a cracker or everyone I care about will DIE!” mode.
> 
> Note: Ori’s not a totally reliable narrator here. Nobody was angry at him, just confused and like: “Oh my God, what the hell has happened in this poor child’s life to make him act like this?” but they were just trying to make a friendly gesture and don’t know what they did wrong, so they were afraid they’d say something else that hurt him, and so… said almost nothing, which Ori interpreted as them being offended.
> 
> This has to be kind of a surreal experience for Eema and Co. I mean, spirits are outside of living memory except for a couple creatures like Baur and Kwolok and are to some extent revered as supernatural beings, and they’ve heard from Tokk that last night one just fell from the sky in a giant thunderstorm after coming to Niwen on the back of a Great Owl, another basically-extinct-in-Niwen species that their tribe in particular used to revere, so they were probably expecting this basically mythical being of pure Light… and then this scared 11-year-old kid shows up covered in his own blood and acting like he doesn’t have a profusely bleeding head wound.


	14. Dashing and Bashing

The night was hell. Ori thought he must have spent most of it either wandering in circles, dying over and over to the same stupid spikes and thorns and falling blocks, and running around looking for life and energy shards. But the first light of dawn also brought a ray of hope. Another Ancestral Tree.

The spirit who’d died here was quick and agile, and Ori got an impression of boisterous confidence from him. Most of the memories of him using the ability, there were other spirits around – sometimes testing their own skills against his in races or other games, sometimes just lounging around and only half paying attention to him. He’d sometimes try to get their attention on purpose, though, by sneaking up and startling them, or once pouring a gourd of water onto a sleeping spirit’s face. Sometimes he got away with it – or at least the little bits of memory showed him getting away with it in the moment. Ori suspected that the ones who didn’t have a way of catching him just found more patient ways of getting him back.

He reminded Ori a little of another spirit he knew – or at least, he’d seen the memories of. Eki. And their powers were very similar. This new spirit’s dash wasn’t quite as fast, but the combination of its erratic rolling motion and the way he sort of anchored himself to the ground for just a tiny, barely perceptible instant with each pawstep let him change direction very easily. Most surprisingly, he could even use it in the air! It was sort of like the midair jump, where the movement had to be more gentle, but pushing the air sideways instead of away made it almost like standing on solid ground.

But Eki had only been like that in the earlier memories. This spirit didn’t really seem to have changed. Or maybe he never had time to. Ori knew Eki had been one of the oldest spirits in Nibel, and this one seemed to still be relatively young. Even in the earliest memories the great willow’s light seemed duller, more faded.

And then, like always, things changed around him. In the last memory, the spirit was still running, but he was running  _ from _ someone, or something, for real. Another Spirit? Ori almost  _ hoped _ it was. The creator of the Spirit Arc hadn’t given him any more clues to what had happened back in that hollow in Inkwater Marsh. But whoever, or whatever, the spirit’s pursuer was, he must have been a long way ahead, because every time he looked behind him there was nothing but the dying forest.

In the end, he was killed by a small, simple, careless mistake, one moment of overconfidence. He saw the falling block trap, but he misjudged the distance and ended his dash in the middle of it. He almost got out anyway, but the difference between out and  _ almost _ out crushed his lower body beyond all hope of healing, and he’d barely dragged himself to where the Ancestral Tree now stood before he died.

As soon as he was back in his own body Ori winced and shook his head. He’d made that mistake a few times. Dash was so quick that it was easy to overshoot or undershoot when he was inexperienced with it. At least now he knew better.

“...ooor not.” Ori groaned as he got to his feet, glad he’d taken the opportunity to set a Soul Link next to the tree. He glared at the trap, the same stupid trap that had claimed both of their lives, then he glared back at the Ancestral Tree. He couldn’t actually feel any change in its faint light, and Sein hadn’t thought there was anything left of a spirit’s consciousness, but he had a feeling the spirit would have been laughing at him. He hadn’t really even made the same mistake, he _knew_ he had to keep running. He’d just tripped over his own feet. The last thing he felt was the wind from the massive stone block pushing the air out of the way as it plummeted towards him.

At least those kinds of traps ended it quickly unless he just got a limb caught. Thorns were usually slow and painful, and the larger spikes… sometimes he barely felt anything, but there were times he remembered seeing them jutting from his body, or watching the blood pool underneath him, and struggling to try to free himself for an unfair amount of time.

He tried the power a few more times, and ended up with scraped palms and elbows, and blood dripping from his nose, before he figured it out. Just like the aerial jump it felt weird because the ancestral spirit had paws instead of hooves, and could move them a tiny bit in ways Ori couldn’t that changed the way he touched the ground just slightly. But the worst culprit was that he wasn’t picking his feet up enough. Toes could probably get scraped or bruised or folded under or a claw broken, but mostly if they hit something they’d just slide over. But even a small raised patch of stone could catch the front of Ori’s hoof and send him flying.

But once he got the hang of it, it was incredible how much easier just one ability made everything. It was easier to avoid getting surrounded, get out of the way of spines and balls of false-light from the slimes and spittle-slugs, and dart in and out of range of his own attacks. In the air it was a bit slower, but it still covered as much sideways distance as if he could use the midair jump twice. He could get across much larger gaps, he could jump from one side of a tree and make two sharp turns to reach a branch on the opposite side, and having an extra chance to turn around if he made a mistake had saved his life multiple times. And, well… if all that failed, it made the trip back from his Soul Link faster too.

  
  


Ori materialized the map again and tried to see if there was any feature or landmark that looked familiar, then tried to trace his path on the ink-splotched paper and shook his head in annoyance. “Lupo...”

He’d run into the cartographer earlier that morning. Lupo seemed pleased to see him, but his brow furrowed with worry when Ori told him about the moki. Evidently Owl Meadow Tribe’s elders had commissioned him to map out the safest paths through Kwolok’s Hollow, and he was supposed to meet up with their own expedition at the old temple, a sprawling ruin that contained a spirit well.

“If you’re this deep into the Great Toad’s abode,” said Lupo, “Then where are they?”

“I don’t know. We split up around… I think around here?” Ori pointed to about the right area on one of the several large pages Lupo was working on. “It wasn’t very far after we came through the statue.”

“The Great Statue of Kwolok? But that route hasn’t been open for generations – the passage was closed during the time of the great decay.”

“Well, we opened it. Tokk helped too, a bit.” Ori squinted at the map again. “That’s kind of a shortcut, right?”

“Ooh...” Lupo winced. “Oh, no, that’s not good at all. Tokk, Tokk, Tokk… why am I not surprised?”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Tokk, well… he used to be a great mapmaker himself. He taught me everything I know. But Tokk’s always been obsessed with the past, dusty old ruins and such, and it’s gotten worse as he’s gotten older. I’m sure he was so excited to explore those caves himself he forgot what lay beyond and didn’t warn you away.”

“Warn me away from what?” Ori asked. “You sent me here!” He pulled out the map of Inkwater Marsh Lupo had given him and showed where the boundary led approximately to where the great statue was marked on the new map.

“I sent you _here._ ” Lupo tapped the edge of Ori’s map. “As I told you, any map I gave you of this place would be badly outdated. I’ve been focusing on the southern part of Kwolok’s Hollow while the moki searched for a safe route to the north – since it’s closer to their village. I assumed that would be the fastest way for you as well, but if they were near the statue they must have had to turn back. If there isn’t a path to the North then the farther south they go, the safer it is. Crossing over the hills here, then going down to the coastline, across the river, and back north over Mouldwood Hills, would be easiest, but it’s a much longer journey. That, and it goes right across Howling Groves land though, so they’d need permission to pass through. And from what I gather things have been a little frosty between Owl Meadow and the tribes further south on account of an argument over rainwater cisterns on the hills here. That wouldn’t be a problem for you, but the elders want to avoid their territory altogether, so they’d have to stay a bit farther north – something like this. But going straight through the statue is completely out of the question! That would take them straight through the most inhospitable part of the swamp!” He traced a circle right around the area Ori must have come through, and chuckled. “The only thing worse than trying to cross that without a boat would be trying to cross it with one! It’s all thorns and poisoned mud!”

“Yeah… I noticed.” Ori groaned. His tailtip curled in annoyance. Of _course_ it was.

“Oh. Right, I suppose if you’re here talking to me you obviously got through it on your own somehow,” said Lupo. “And moki are good climbers. But three skilled warriors is one thing, a whole tribe’s another. I’m afraid there’s no way a larger group with elders and pups would make it through there without loss of life!”

  
  


Lupo had drawn Ori a smaller copy of the map he was making for the moki, and it had mostly been helpful. He’d found the temple, and the spirit well. It had gotten rid of the scrapes and bruises, but his energy just wasn’t coming back the way it should have, and there was a constant throbbing pain in his head like he’d been picked up by the throat and shaken. It only got worse as the day drew on and the air became hot and thick with humidity. He’d found the river that was supposed to lead him to Kwolok, but actually following it was easier said than done, and dense thickets forced him away from it. The thorns were one thing, but there also enormous, vining plants covered in spines and beads of what looked like dew, but turned out to be a thick, incredibly sticky sap. Ori had been careful touching it, and he still had to hack his way free with the Spirit Edge. The rotting carcasses of small creatures not lucky enough to have a sharp weapon that burned away the resin adorned higher branches. It was like a giant spiderweb, without the spider.

But now, the detail on the map had run out, and the paper was covered with markings indicating ‘unknown.’ Ori rolled his eyes and put the map away. Whatever. At least it showed him he was  _ close. _ He could find the rest of the way on his own.

He jumped down into a large depression where the ground must have been undermined by water. Spikes lined the overhanging edges, and it was too high to jump, but on the far side a set of wooden ladders and scaffolds led up into the trees. Ori looked around, hesitating for a moment. Nothing dangerous around, besides the spikes… he set the Soul Link near the middle. It was safe. Probably.

When he could, Ori tried to put it in well-hidden places, or ones that were out of reach of the corruptions. But if it was in some secluded alcove or hollow tree he was also vulnerable to being trapped in a corner. The things didn’t seem smart enough to actually lie in wait for him, but a couple times he’d died, come back, and immediately had to fight for his life again. And here, the Skeetos were numerous enough that there wasn’t really anywhere they couldn’t reach. Even with two chances to change direction in midair Ori had fallen off too many branches trying to dodge them. It seemed like it was actually safer to come back on open ground where he could dodge in any direction and had a bit of space to run while he got his bearings.

He was about to head back towards the river when he heard the screams. He froze, ears swiveling this way and that. Coming from up ahead… getting closer… getting louder. And there was something else as well. Something  _ big. _ He could hear the crashing and splintering of the undergrowth, and he could  _ feel _ the ground vibrate under his hooves. He took a few tense steps back, his heart already pounding.

Then the moki burst from from the undergrowth. All three of them were alive, but they were winded and panting, their tails were bushed out from fear, and they were unarmed. 

“This way! This way! Up here!” Eema gasped. She scrambled up the ladders and leaped to the safety of a tree trunk. She looked back, checking that her companions were still with her, and spotted him. “Ori?” She froze for a moment, then shook herself. “Ori! Get to high ground now!”

“\- Never seen one that big before – it’ll burn down half the -” Tann was limping on all fours, but was still right behind Eema and Snesh. He paused at the top of the ladders and looked back at something Ori couldn’t see over the edge of the depression. “Ori, up here, quick!” He leaped, and barely made it to the safety of the trees, only not falling because Eema caught his wrist and pulled him up.

Fear jolted Ori back into action. He sprinted towards the scaffolding, and had just touched the first step when something gigantic exploded through them, smashing the structure to splinters. Without the aerial dash he’d have been smashed too, and a large piece of flying wood hit the side of his head so hard that he saw double for a moment. But he didn’t need to see the monster clearly to know he was in trouble.

“What’s – what is that thing?”

“A hornbug! I think!” Tann called. “I’ve never seen one that big in my life!”

Ori had never seen an insect that size, either. Nothing even close – not even the Skeetos and the ‘normal’ - if any corruption could be called normal – charging beetles. It stood at least Naru’s height, and it was long, more like a moving set of boulders than a bug. Its body was covered in fungoid protrusions bigger than Ori that looked a bit like stalagmites. The broken end of a spear – probably Tann’s – was wedged into a gap in its armor, but either it hadn’t noticed at all or the blow had just made it angry. The air over its body rippled, and out of habit Ori squinted and shielded his face from the oppressive heat that radiated from its body. It was like a piece of Mount Horu had sprouted legs and come back for revenge.

That habit almost got him killed. It charged, faster than anything that big had any right to, and Ori just barely flung himself out of the way in time. It skidded into the spikes with an earsplitting crash, but turned back around with just scratches on its bulbous head. Ori backed away, readying the Spirit Arc, but the arrow glanced harmless off. Stupid – why did he think that would work? But he was scared to even get close to that thing. He fought the instinct to turn and run as it lunged for him again. There was nowhere to run to, just spikes! Spirit Smash could stun the regular hornbugs and break even their armored heads, but this one was just too massive. He leaped into the air, materializing the Spirit Edge and twisting around ready to slash at its abdomen as it rushed underneath him, but it was too tall – no, it had jumped too! He saw the danger and used his air-jump, changing direction in an instant, but one of the horns, or protruding masses, smashed into his midsection and sent him flying.

Ori hit the stone ground hard, bouncing and rolling into the spike-lined wall. Sharp, stabbing pain tore into his side, and his arm. He tried to scream, but the blow had driven every last drop of air from his lungs. He rolled, then staggered away, his vision blurred and his next breath a shuddering, wheezing gasp. He could hear the moki’s shouts, but he still couldn’t make a sound or do anything but just try to keep breathing. It felt like his chest had broken a long fall onto a thick, unyielding tree branch. Hot blood was running down his body. He had to get away… heal… heal… but the beetle was almost upon him again! He tensed, ready to jump. No, it was another leaping, pouncing attack! He changed the jump into a forward dash at the last moment, rolling behind the monster as it landed and slashing at the joints of its legs, but it was like hitting a tree trunk. The blade opened a small gash, but shattered on the first blow and left Ori’s fingers numb and stinging.

“Ori! Over here!” Eema teetered on the edge of the branch, waving her free arm frantically. “Grab the rope! We’ve got you!”

“Huh?” It took Ori a moment to even see clearly where it was. He blinked repeatedly, trying to make the double vision again. “Yeah… rope...” he panted. That was his chance – maybe his only chance! He couldn’t fight this thing, but if it killed him, he’d come back still trapped in the clearing with the rampaging bug. He had to get out of here! He sprinted for it, jumped, caught it, and started to pull himself up, but his arms felt like they were weighed down with rocks. The moki were pulling him up, but it wasn’t fast enough. He could hear the monster’s clattering footsteps behind him, getting closer fast.

Ori let go of the rope and pushed himself away with the double jump as the beetle thundered past. Its horns sent it swinging wildly, and Ori just barely grabbed it with one hand. All he could do was hang on as it lurched and swayed back and forth like a grass stalk in a storm.

“Whoa! Stop pulling, stop pulling!” Tann shouted. “The bark’ll cut it!”

“Climb! Just climb!” added Snesh.

The ground blow was lit up red, and Ori felt a burst of heat through his fur. He made the mistake of looking down. Fire. Fire was everywhere. The rope was burning – or at least something on it was burning. It was damp, and wouldn’t catch easily, but Ori didn’t want to be hanging from it any longer than he had to. He scaled it as fast as he could, but it was smaller than the usual vines, and difficult to hold onto. Without the Spirit Shard he would have fallen.

But slowly but surely he was being lifted again. “Pull now! Stop! Now!” Eema barked as it swung into and away from the branch.

Ori was almost close enough that he could jump and pull himself to safety when disaster struck. The beetle charged again, making another of its leaping attacks. It wasn’t high enough to reach the branch, but it was high enough to reach Ori – and the rope above him. One of the crooked growths on its back caught on the rope, and with Ori’s weight on the other end he was wrapped around it. For the second time he found himself flying across the clearing towards the spine-covered overhang. He backflipped in the other direction and landed shakily, but on his hooves. But there was a startled cry, and a thump too soft to have been the corruption’s hard-as-stone feet.

Eema lay sprawled next to the haphazardly coiled rope. Snesh had tied it off at the top, but the hornbug’s weight had snapped it, and either she’d been carried off the branch with the part that fell, or there’d been enough slack to pull her off balance. For a heart-stopping moment Ori thought she was dead. She stirred, and dragged herself to her feet, but she was limping, and obviously seriously hurt.

The hornbug had smashed itself into the spikes, but it wheeled around again, scraping at the ground. It reared up on its back legs, and its mandibles spewed out a wave of searing red flame that sent spirit and moki alike scrambling for cover. The grass and moss that filled the cracks in the stones was turned to smoldering embers in an instant. Ori was forced back almost into the spikes. He glanced to his side. Eema was actually pressed against them, her thin body almost woven between the razor-sharp spines. The hornbug backed up too, but for a different reason. It was going to charge again.

But Ori charged first. Ignoring the pain of burning embers digging into his hooves, he shot across the sunken clearing like an arrow. The heat, and the malevolent yet lifeless glare in the thing’s eyes, almost stopped him in his tracks. If he’d had time to think about how frightened he was, he couldn’t have made himself do it. But he didn’t. All he had time for was seeing the direction it was about to go, and realizing it  _wasn’t_ after him, and he sprinted towards it and plunged the Spirit Edge into its eye with a furious scream.

The armor didn’t protect the hornbug there. But he hadn’t killed it. A toss of its colossal head sent Ori flying again. He found himself lying flat on his back with the needle-sharp tip of a spine jutting from his body. It hurt, but not as much as he expected it too, and it had really just made a tunnel under his skin and come back out. He didn’t think he was dying. Yet. But he was stuck on it, and by the time he pulled himself free there was no time at all to dodge the hornbug’s charge. He rolled under its head, but had to crawl out from under its body after it slammed into the wall. The heat… he was pretty sure he was burned where it had touched him, and the wound the spike had made hurt a lot more now.

Well, its attention was on him now, at least. Problem solved. Before the monster could turn, Ori activated Spirit Smash and brought the hammer down on its leg with all his strength. Something cracked. But that hadn’t stopped it. The un-light in its right eye had gone out, and yellow-green liquid that looked like pus was dripping from the wound. Again it spewed fire in all directions. Ori leaped over and behind the wave of flame, having to use both jumps to do it. Okay… heal… he didn’t have much strength left, but he had to use it.

If he was alone, Ori thought, he probably could have jumped into the beast’s horns at the right angle as it charged, and it could have tossed him right over the wall to safety. It might have killed him a few times first, but it was  _possible_ – assuming he wasn’t too disoriented after coming back. But Eema definitely couldn’t get out that way. He had to fight it. He  _could_ hurt it, he just needed to keep it up until it died.

But even the Spirit Smash was useless against its head, and Ori’s arms soon ached from using every weapon he had against its legs and abdomen every time it missed him. Nauseating-smelling smoke poured from gaping wounds in its flanks now, and at least two legs were broken. It wasn’t jumping anymore now, but it was still charging at him and breathing fire. And he didn’t have the strength to use the healing power again. He couldn’t make another mistake.

But he did. All it took was one moment of lost focus, one moment where his eyes strayed to the motion in the tree above him. He wasn’t quick enough to dodge the next charge, and the monsters leg sent him sprawling. Fear overcame the pain in his head and side, like they’d been split open, but his knee just wouldn’t bear his weight. He was going to die… he was going to die…

“Hey! Over here, Ugly!” A pebble bounced off the hornbug’s head with a sharp click. Eema was on her feet again. It turned towards her. She gripped the cords of her sling in her teeth and scrambled away with one forepaw held off the ground.

Ori couldn’t run on all fours as easily, not without smashing his face into the ground. But he still focused the energy of a dash into his one good back leg and launched himself towards it. It was more like tripping on purpose than actually jumping, but he landed in a somersault and drove the point of the Spirit Edge in between the plates on the hornbug’s abdomen.

“We’ve got a vine! We’ve got a vine!” Snesh and Tann shouted from the tree. “Can you still climb?”

“I – I can try!” Eema panted. “Ori-”

“I know! I’ll keep it distracted!”

“What? That wasn’t what I -”

“Go!” Ori screamed. He shakily stood up again, backing away from the hornbug as it prepared to charge. He had to lean on the Spirit Edge for balance, but keeping the blade together this long was draining away what little energy he had left. No… forget the blade… the thin edge was sparking and breaking apart. The hammer… that was easier, more stable even if it was harder to form. He teetered unsteadily as he tried to lift the weapon. It was bad enough trying to swing it without the weight pulling him off balance on two legs, but on one…

That was it! It would, but he could  _use_ that! The thing charged before he had any time to mentally prepare himself. He hobbled to the side as fast as he could, and swung wildly in the opposite direction. The force actually yanked him off his feet and spun him around. He ended up on the ground with his head ringing, but only from the fall. He’d dodged it.

“You’re going to get killed!”

“The faster you go the less time I have to do this!” Ori pushed himself upright, still leaning on his weapon. He spat the words out through a mouthful of coppery-tasting blood. His tongue burned when he pressed it against the roof of his mouth. He didn’t know how long he could keep it up before he got killed. But as dangerous as it was to come back still trapped with the rampaging insect, he’d still _get_ another chance. He wanted to explain about the Soul Link, but right now trying to talk hurt too much, and he knew he couldn’t take his eyes off the hornbug anymore.

Here it came… he stumbled sideways again, but this time he was ready for the swing.  _Now!_ The hammer pulled him just out of the way. He started to fall, but planted his good leg against the stones and pushed off in the other direction, spinning all the way around and striking the beast’s leg joint as it passed. And finally, it gave way.

There was already a useless leg on that side from earlier in the fight. With a second one broken, the hornbug stumbled, and fell. Its momentum and sheer weight rolled it over, snapping the protrusions on its back like twigs. It smashed into the wall of spikes again… but this time, it hit belly-first, where its armored head and back didn’t protect it.

The giant beetle tried to drag itself off the spikes towards Ori, but just the single good leg on its left side wouldn’t support its bulk. It couldn’t catch him anymore… but it still had the fire. He could probably escape – the damp vine wouldn’t burn easily, and Eema was painstakingly making her way up to safety. But then he’d still have a badly hurt leg, and not enough energy to form the Spirit Arc, or move his Soul Link out of this trap. He limped towards it, letting the hammer dissolve. He needed the Spirit Edge again… no, still something heavier. He concentrated on the blade, pouring more Light into it and making it broader and thicker, without the fine tip. The way Opher made it. He brought it down on the hornbug’s belly with all his strength again, and again, and again.

It collapsed just as Ori was about to. Its abdomen split open in a billowing cloud of smoke. Ori gagged at the stench and backed away from the smoldering carcass, and the spreading puddle of sizzling slime. But the released Light followed him. A dozen orbs of orange, and blue, and green were pulled to the Spirit Shard on his left wrist. It was another one he’d found, and Twillen had identified it as one which helped draw things in.

Ori took a deep breath and let it out as a relieved sigh as strength surged through his body, bringing numb, shaking limbs back to life. His hurt knee could bear weight again. Not without pain, and he still limped to the vine, but he was pretty sure he could use the midair jump if he had to. He wasn’t looking forward to it, though.

“Come on, just a little farther!” Snesh called. “That’s it – I’ve got you!” The Moki leaned down and took Ori’s hand, and helped him up onto the branch. “Are you hurt? I – never mind, of course you’re hurt, but – those were some bad falls. Are you okay?”

“I think so,” Ori said weakly. With the life and energy shards he felt better, but the adrenaline of the fight was fading, and his whole body had turned weak and shaky. He looked at the three moki in a daze. His eyelids felt heavy. “Eema, are you-”

“Yeah.” Eema’s fur was sticky with blood. She’d been cut badly by the spines and her arm was swollen and held at an awkward angle. She and Tann were both holding onto each other like the other would fall out of the tree if they let go. Her eyes shimmered with tears, but she was smiling, and Ori couldn’t tell if she was crying, laughing, or something in between. Whichever it was, it was contagious, because soon he was tearing up too.

“That rescue could have gone better,” Eema said with a sigh.

Ori winced. “Sorry...”

“Not yours, ours,” she replied. “That was one of the bravest things I’ve ever seen. I owe you my life.”

“No you don’t. You wouldn’t have fallen if I’d gotten up here fast enough.”

“That could have been any of us,” Tann said firmly. “It almost was. And you risked your life fighting that thing – distracting it – without hesitating.”

“What was I supposed to do, stand there and let it kill us?”

“Many would have,” said Eema. “Even the best warriors – nobody does it on purpose, but against a monster like that it’s easy to just… freeze.”

“I know… I’ve done it before. A lot of times.” Ori grimaced. There’d been plenty of times when he’d only barely been saved by Sein’s direction, or a panicked Spirit Flame, and plenty more when he hadn’t been. “When I saw Kuro for the first time… I couldn’t even move.”

The moki exchanged an odd look that seemed like it was part confusion, part worry. “Umm… forgive my asking, but… just how old  _are_ you?” Eema asked. “I’ve never seen a spirit before, but the old tales said their bodies didn’t change with time.”

Ori’s answer must not have been what any of them was expecting. Eema’s eyes became the size of the ones in the statue, Tann asked if he was joking, and Snesh almost fell out of the tree.

“That’s barely older than my brother!” she exclaimed. “And he isn’t supposed to leave the village without an adult with him!”

“Neither’s anyone,” Snesh pointed out. “Not alone.”

“You know what I mean.” Eema shook her head sadly. “Ori, I’m so sorry – we shouldn’t have split up and left you by yourself.”

“I can take care of myself!” Ori snapped. “You don’t have to fuss over me like I’m a baby!” That was his job. Who cared if _he_ was by himself? Who cared if _he_ was scared? When he found Ku he was never letting her out of his sight again. But he didn’t try to push them away when he felt furry arms wrapped around him. If anything, he leaned against their bodies a bit. There was no light in their embrace, or the clear feeling of caring he felt from Naru and Ku, but there was warmth.

“Don’t worry,” Snesh fake-whispered in his ear. “She’s only doing it to take attention off herself so we don’t fuss over _her._ ”

“Oh, be quiet!” Eema tried to swat at him, but her arm abruptly stopped halfway. She pulled it back against her chest in a sudden jerking movement, her eyes screwed tightly shut. She let out a faint whimper, and when she next spoke her breathing was strained. “Might… be broken...”

Ori cringed just watching her expression. He knew the feeling almost exactly. It was probably about the same as what had just happened to his leg. And he knew how scary it could be. He’d been reduced to a sobbing scrap of fur huddled in a corner so many times. But it didn’t usually last that long. Either he limped his way to finding a life shard or spirit well, or the injury got him killed. How long would it take to heal on its own?

“Can… can life shards help?” he asked. “Or spirit wells? There’s one back that way, not too far.”

Her ears perked up a bit. “A little. Not much for my arm with the time we have, though.”

“It’ll help the cuts and burns at least,” said Snesh. “And keep them from scarring. It might help with Tann’s foot, too. But a bad sprain or break still has to be set or wrapped… and to not put any weight on it for a while.”

Eema muttered something under her breath that Ori suspected wasn’t a word to repeat. “I can’t sit around not putting weight on it all autumn! We’ll have to just… find some of those plants with the purple sap, and hopefully those take enough of the pain away that I can hold out until we reach Kwolok."

“That’s a really, _really_ bad idea. I tried the stuff once, and I could barely even tell which way was up. By the time it wore off I’d hurt myself enough that I was worse off than if I hadn’t taken it.”

“Then what do you want me to do? I can’t climb like this with one arm.”

“I can carry you if necessary.” Tann licked the tip of her nose.

“Is that a threat? You’d probably drop me on my head!” she said with feigned indignation, but smiled and licked him back.

Ori wasn’t sure he totally understood why they’d just started grooming each other’s faces. He knew the instinct to lick an injury – he usually resisted the urge unless he was  _sure_ a wound wasn’t poisoned, but he still did it sometimes. But as far as he knew they hadn’t been hurt there. Having someone else do it was probably comforting, he guessed, but Naru had never really done something like that.

Snesh rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out in disgust. “You see, Ori, this is why they were chosen for this mission: so nobody else had to put up with this for a while.”

“What does that say about you, Snesh?” retorted Tann.

“Well, they had to send at least _one_ skilled explorer along!” Snesh got to his feet, stretched, and backed away out of reach with a teasing grin.

“If there weren’t already two of us wounded I’d push you off this branch,” said Eema. But she seemed in better humor now. She stood up carefully, not completely letting go of Tann. “We’re close to Kwolok’s home ponds,” she announced. “Not quite as close now that we’ve been chased back here, but close. We have to push on.”

“If there’s a spirit well close by, we should at least try to get your wounds – and everyone else’s – patched up,” said Snesh. “And… Eema, I do think it might be best if you stay behind. With Tann – he won’t have an easy time climbing on that foot, either.”

“I know the land here better than either of you,” Tann argued. “My tribe used to hunt and fish here, remember? And you know the healing plants and fungi better than I do, so -”

“We keep going, and that’s final,” said Eema. She cautiously shuffled towards the end of the branch. “Can you loop the vine over here, so it hangs down outside the pit? - We’re not just trying to reach Kwolok, we’re searching for a way to the Wellspring Glades for the whole tribe – young, old, sick or injured, it doesn’t matter. If I can’t… make it...” she winced as she slowly made her way down the vine, pausing to grip it in her jaws. Ori leaped from the branch, and as soon as he was on solid ground he wouldn’t just fall off of, set the Soul Link there. Having it be outside the confines of the spike-lined pit lifted a great weight from his shoulders. He was ready to try to help Eema, but the vine reached low enough for her to jump the rest of the way. “Then it’s not a way at all,” the moki finished.

“That’s what Lupo told me,” said Ori.

“Lupo? You’ve spoken to him?”

“Huh? Yeah. He was really worried about you.” Ori explained where he’d met the mapmaker.

Tann shook his head in annoyance as he descended the vine. “That’s too far back now,” he said. “It’s better to just keep going to Kwolok now, and  _then_ double back to find him. The ground we covered last night would be too dangerous for the tribe anyway, so one way or another we’ll need his map.”

“Actually...” Ori smiled innocently, and rematerialized the smaller version he’d been given. “I think this might help a little, at least. You’ve been here before? Do you know how to fill this part in?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whee, the Hornbug boss fight! The one downside of Ori having the ability to come back from the dead and having more freedom of movement is that I have to make sure the bosses and escape sequences have actual stakes! For Howl there… technically weren’t. The other ones there’s generally something stopping Ori from just dying, coming back, and walking away in the opposite direction, but the Hornbug’s just kind of there as an obstacle.
> 
> So, poor Soul Link location decisions helped a bit, but really it was Mokisquad to the rescue! I’m liking these characters so far. These guys are still pretty young – I think probably late teens. In a modern society they’d still be early college-age at most, and maybe even still in high school. Historically it wasn’t uncommon for people that young to be on exploratory and/or military missions, and they’re not inexperienced, but they aren’t exactly mature either. They’re all feeling like they’re in over their heads, and have no idea what to do with Ori. Again, he’s this semi-mythical being who’s really obviously a way better fighter than any Moki, but is also really obviously a scared, vulnerable child. Do you treat him like a more experienced warrior, or do you treat him like a kid who really really really should not be in this horrible situation?
> 
> Ori’s special technique with the Spirit Smash is based on a real mechanic; the way both it and Spirit Edge move Ori around a little bit and stall his falling have been exploited in some pretty cool ways by the community.


	15. The Guardian of the Marsh

Ori’s jaw dropped as the orb of light floated down from the treetops towards him.

“Are you… are you like Sein?” For a moment, he’d thought it was her. He quickly realized it was stupid – Sein was safe back in Nibel. Back with the Spirit Tree. And this being’s Light was a little different. There was the same comforting warmth, but it was like the warmth from the embers of a snuffed out fire. And there was pain… sadness… despair. Sein’s light had been full of those things too, when they traveled together during the blindness, but not quite in the same way. Not as deeply.

“I… do not know. Who is Sein?” The orb sounded weak, and uncertain. Her slow flight wavered.

“Oh. She’s… well, I think she’s like you. Sein’s the...” Ori tried to remember how she’d first introduced herself to him, such a long time ago. “The light and eyes of the Spirit Tree. In Nibel.” He glanced back at Kwolok, the Guardian of the Marsh. He looked more like the statue than Ori had expected, but he was much more impressive in person. He had never felt the presence of a Light creature so strong except the Spirit Tree or Sein, and it had a similar quality, gentle and steady. But he reminded Ori just as much of Naru – especially with the small group of moki that lived in his hollow.

It was funny, he thought. When he’d found Sein, the first corruptions to attack him were the frogs. Now a frog was introducing him to this ‘fragment’ of an ancient light. Whatever that meant.

“I think I am less than that,” the orb sighed. “I am the Voice of the Forest. And you are Ori?”

“Yeah. What’s your name? Sein’s the Light of Nibel, so don’t you have a name too?”

Her reply was hesitant. “I’m afraid I can’t remember, Ori. So much… so much has been lost. It has been a long time since I last saw your kind.” The Voice of the Forest drifted closer. Ori slowly extended a hand to meet her. His fingers just brushed her surface for a second, but there was a feeling like a spark. A shock shot up his arm. It went numb, then tingled for a while before returning to normal. Sein said she had sort of bonded her light to his own back then, lending him what strength she could. Had the Voice done the same thing?

“Oh.” His kind… he wanted to ask her what had happened to them. They’d died, but _why?_ It seemed like most of them had fallen to the decay that overtook Niwen, but there had to be something _more_ than that. He’d found another Ancestral Tree, deep in the jungle. The spirit who lay there had shown him a reflection technique a bit like Reem’s. She only seemed to be able to throw things back the way they came, more or less, not twist around them in midair the way Ori could. But the way she focused the Light more tightly, and the way she had to time it more precisely, were things he’d applied to the power he knew. But he thought he’d probably have figured that out on his own eventually. He was slowly getting accustomed to the way this place tried to sap his strength and wick away any power he tried to use.

But the tree has shown him something even more important – and with how useful Reem’s power was that wasn’t a small compliment. It was how she’d died. It was just like the tree down near Howl’s den, but… from the other side. She’d been hunted by her own kind. She was on the shores of the great river, with two other young-seeming spirits and what looked like a half-finished raft, when they’d come for her. Five others, looking frightened but determined. For a while they’d stood eyeing each other warily. Words never came through in the memories, but he could tell there was arguing, shouting. The brilliant flashes of emotion – fear and anger and sorrow- made his antennae feel like they’d been tied in a knot. 

Then the others had attacked. The spirit of the tree and her companions all scattered in different directions, but she ended up with two of them after her. They couldn’t quite keep up with her, but they both knew Spirit Arc, and one of them was using it differently, splitting each arrow into three smaller ones. But she could only reflect one at a time. Ori hoped the pursuing spirits would tire themselves out, even though he knew that one way or another it ended with her dead in the middle of the swamp. She’d tried to just send the arrows back in their general direction at first and avoid hurting them, but after she was hit, she reflected one with deadly accuracy. One spirit fell, the other let out a furious shriek and sent one last volley her way before abandoning the chase and rushing to his companion’s side.

But a second arrow had already found its mark. An explosion of pain ripped through Ori’s right eye, like a thousand charge flames going off inside his head at once. One side of his vision was blindingly bright and pitch dark at the same time. It wasn’t a new pain. It was incredible how easy it was to get hit in the eye by flying spines, or falling facefirst into thorns or spikes, or missing the timing on reflecting a ball of false-light while looking right at it, or even being careless with an ordinary tree branch. But every time he begged nature to let it be the last. If the tree’s spirit had done the same, she’d gotten her wish, but not soon enough. It was night by the time she collapsed, maybe not even the same day.

Ori was starting to think maybe he’d been dwelling too much on the fate of the Spirit Edge’s creator, that something must have happened between her and the one she’d fought. But this… this meant spirit had fought spirit at least twice, and in groups of more than one. There was  _something_ he wasn’t understanding.

But he couldn’t work up the courage to bring it up. Right now he was trying to avoid thinking about it too much. “Is it okay if I call you Voice then?” he asked.

“That will be just fine.”

* * *

“Teach its waters to flow again?” Ori repeated Kwolok’s instructions. At least, he thought they were Kwolok’s instructions. If he’d heard them right. As amazed as he was… as worried as he was… there’d been too much fear, too much worry, too much amazement in too short a time. And the presence of Kwolok and Voice, the gentle pulsating rhythm of their light, the sounds of insects buzzing and chirping as the sun sank towards the marsh’s waters, and the feeling that for the first time in a while he wasn’t in danger had almost lulled Ori to sleep. He thought he’d caught _most_ of the Great Frog’s words, but not all of them. “What does that… mean, exactly?” he drummed his fingers together nervously. “Is the Wellspring where Niwen’s Element of Waters is?”

“Element of Waters?” Voice said uncertainly. “The waters have vanished from parts of Niwen, and become corrupted and foul, but they aren’t in any one place.”

“I didn’t mean all water, I meant… the three hearts of the elements, I guess? Waters, Wind, and Warmth? They help the Spirit Tree keep nature in balance – at least, where I come from. They got… corrupted, and I had to help Sein fix them.”

Voice hesitated. “I…  _hope_ Niwen doesn’t have anything like those,” she answered. “I’ve forgotten so much of what I know… who I used to be, but I think even in this state I would remember. But if they exist, I doubt I would have the strength to do that.”

“Oh.”

“I’ve never heard of anything like that either,” said Snesh.

“Then what does it mean to teach the waters to flow by setting its wheels in motion?” Ori asked. “If the water isn’t coming from there?”

Voice sighed. “How do you expect  _me_ to know that, Ori?”

“Because Kwolok said you would guide me!”

“And I will, as best I can, but it has been many, many years since I’ve left the marsh. I’m afraid we’ll have to find out together.”

“I don’t think any water comes from the Wellspring,” said Eema. “Just flows through it. The great river that branches out and runs through all of Inkwater Marsh is fed by it, but it is in turn fed by other rivers.”

The moki expedition was nearing the end of their journey. They’d also been joined by a couple of guides, members of the small clan of moki that dwelled in the relatively safe part of the marsh that was under Kwolok’s control. Tann was chatting animatedly with one of them – they were all apparently part of his old tribe, though not his close family, and it was like a reunion for him. Moki families seemed to be far more complicated than the ones Ori knew, and he was afraid to ask how they knew where one ended and another began when they didn’t have the same parents. The other was trying to show Ori and Eema a map she had found.

“I would show it to Lupo the mapmaker, but I think he has enough maps,” the young moki babbled. “Oh – but I hear Tokk, the one who wanders, used to love maps! Could you give it to him? He is up in the Wellspring Glades, right?”

“Yeah, but… we’re going to the Wellspring Glades,” said Ori.

“You are going. We will show you the way, but Grandmother says it is a waste of time to go if there is not clean water. Maybe we will go someday, but today we have to go back home.”

“Oh.” Ori turned back to Eema, but the tattered parchment was pressed into his hand. “Oh, uhh… thank you?”

The trail turned out to go past the place where the hornbug had attacked, and then uphill along the river into rockier terrain, up poles and ladders, through the trees in stretches, and along a treacherous rope across a dry streambed lined with spinebushes. There were a couple of skeletons at the bottom. A few Corruptions had attacked them, but they’d been easy to dispatch. It was amazing how much just one ability changed the way he could fight, throwing them into the air, off ledges and into spines and thorns, and most importantly far away from the moki.

But the path ended abruptly in a great stone wall built across a narrow gully. It was overgrown, and most of it was covered by thorns, especially higher up. A web of the sticky vining plants overhead blocked them from ascending into the canopy, and it was so thick and choked with fallen leaves that it was almost like being in a cave.

“Now what?” Tann asked. “Did we take a wrong turn?”

“No, this is the path,” said the older of their guides. “This stonework wasn’t here before – or most of these deathglue vines. This is recent...”

Eema groaned. “Well, unless we can cut through that mess up there, and get a ladder over those spikes, this path’s no good.” She stared at the wall for a few seconds, then her ears leapt up and she spun jerkily around. “Ori! Do you think your light-cutter can get through those?”

“Uhh...” Ori glanced up at the tangle of vines. It would be awkward trying to swing it one-handed above him while clinging to the wall, but if he kept jumping off, slashing at it, and air-dashing back, over and over, and he didn’t get himself stuck, then eventually...

“I don’t like this place...” the smaller moki pressed closer to the group. “There’s a bad smell...”

“Probably something that caught in the vines,” said Snesh. He wrinkled his nose. “If we try to cut them open, they could come down on us, too.”

Ori shuddered. He hadn’t thought of that. He had an idea of what  _something_ was, and he didn’t want it, or the glue-covered spikes, suddenly breaking loose and falling.

Snesh continued: “A ladder would have to be made in at least two parts to get it through here, but if we can find a branch to lash it to it might be possible. But what about the other way?”

Tann shrugged. “We’ll find out when we get to the other side, right?” He sniffed the air. “Yeah, something or someone definitely died up there, but there’s something else…”

The clattering of gravel and the squelching, sucking sound of mucus-laden flesh caught Ori’s attention – and Eema’s as well. “Look out!” she shouted. Ori jumped back just in time. A sickly-pink blob of poison and false-light the size of his head came down where he’d just been standing.

“Mortar worms! I thought so!” said Tann. “Get back, get back!”

“There’s another behind us!” cried the moki who’d given Ori the map.

“Wait for it to shoot, then run!” Eema ordered.

Ori had already made up his mind that he wasn’t going to run. It was bad enough having to go in the complete opposite direction from Ku without wasting even more time backtracking around a stupid pile of rocks. If it was that morning, maybe. Mortar worms were deadly if their projectiles hit, but with Reem’s power they were one of the easier kinds of corruptions to fight, and sometimes he even avoided killing them because they made it easier to get to high places. But if he made a mistake… he wasn’t the only one in danger this time. There were five moki, two – no, three – mortar worms, and he could only knock away one attack at a time. It wasn’t too different from how the spirit of the ancestral tree had died.

He tried to keep his eyes on all of them at once, waiting for them to shoot. The furthest back one was first, but its shot was leading the moki, and they saw it coming and stopped. The second one, and the third, though, went off almost at the same time, and both right at them.

Reflexes and experience took over. He bounded over Eema’s head and sprang off the wall straight into the path of one of the shots. He reached out without touching it, and kicked it away with all his strength – nowhere near the corruptions, but nowhere near the moki either, and it launched him back into the second. He tried to send it back the way he came, but he timed it just a little too late. He grabbed it, but right as the tip of its teardrop shape touched his chest. With a yelp of pain he was sent flying back into Tann and Eema, bowling them over into the wall.

“Ow! You okay, Ori?”

“Yeah!” Ori winced as he gasped out the reply. He could feel even the little bits of acid that had touched him burning through his fur. He watched the projectile land near the worm that had shot it. Close, but not enough. He couldn’t fight them all at once. He shot one with Spirit Arc, but even with two arrows in it, it wasn’t dead yet. A reflected projectile turned the one further back into a glowing puddle of sizzling ooze. He missed the middle one again, but the force of the impact brought down a rocky overhang above it. It also sent Ori into the rough stone wall so hard he thought it had smashed his skull open. He looked back at the rocks, expecting to see blood… but instead there was the same pinkish glow as the worms.

Sein had told him it was some sort of decay mold that wormed its way into cracks in certain types of rock. It dissolved and weakened them, and better yet it would explode when hit by the venom of some corruptions. Just before the mortar worms had shown up the idea of trying to break through the wall with Spirit Smash had crossed Ori’s mind, but now he had a better idea.

“Cover your heads!” he shouted as he sprang off the wall to meet the last mortar worm’s projectile. He twisted past it and flung it at a higher angle, then immediately made for the ledge the monster’s burrow was on. The blast made the ground tremble, and a chunk of stone smashed into his elbow. He let out a cry of pain and almost lost his grip on the ledge.

But the wall was gone – or at least, the hole blasted into it was easily big enough to walk through over the rubble. Ori pulled himself up and dispatched the remaining mortar worm with a swift stroke of the Spirit Edge. The single life shard it gave him wasn’t enough to heal the wound. His whole arm was awash with an odd tingling pain like he’d fallen asleep on it, and even though he could see himself move his fingers it felt like he couldn’t. When he jumped back down from the ledge the landing jarred the limb so badly it felt like it was being torn off. His breath caught in his throat. He wasn’t going to cry… he wasn’t going to cry… Voice had questioned why he’d teared up over a few scrapes a while back. Part of him wanted to tell her she’d understand if she had a body that wasn’t just an orb of light, but she’d been right. It didn’t even hurt that badly. And the injury now wasn’t as bad as Eema’s arm, and she hadn’t… well, she had a bit. She was blinking away tears now, and her breathing was labored, like she was trying to avoid making any noise.

“Are you okay?” Ori asked.

“Better than if one of those worms had hit us – but - I would have preferred if you’d crashed into Snesh,” Eema said as she led the party over the scattered boulders into dazzling sunlight. “I think we could have gotten away from the mortar worms without you putting yourself in danger leaping into their shots like that, but I guess it took care of the -”

“Hey! Who tore down my wall?” A deep, scratchy voice like the roll of thunder echoed across the clearing. Everyone flinched, and Ori dove behind a fallen timber. He peered out, keeping his ears and antennae flat against his head.

The owner of the voice wasn’t that close. He stood on the opposite bank of the enormous river that lay just beyond the wall. It was far too wide to jump. Ori thought if he had the feather, and he threw two Light Bursts into the air to gain extra height and speed off of and used Charge Jump to meet them, he might have just made it, if the wind was on his side. Right now it wasn’t full, with slow-moving, dark water far below its banks and large rocks jutting above the surface, but everywhere there wasn’t water looked like it was either muddy, slippery with algae and weeds, or had been covered by spiny decay growths. But the creature had an imposing, dark presence. Nothing like Kuro’s, but strong.

“Come on over. Let’s get a closer look at you!” the creature beckoned. Ori crept back into view, and looked uncertainly at the moki.

“I… I think that’s a Gorlek!” said Eema.

“Is he safe?”

“I hope so. I’ve never seen one with my own eyes before!”

There was a bridge across, of a sort. Long ropes almost too thick to even get a hand around spanned the river, with occasional wooden poles lashed between them. But even they were a long distance apart, and he couldn’t see how they were supposed to work as footholds. It wasn’t difficult to cross along the ropes themselves, but Ori was still nervous, both about the river below and the creature waiting on the other side. As soon as he got within jumping distance, he sprang off to the side, staying well away from the short axe he carried in one arm. One of four.

“I’m sorry – I’m sorry about your wall!” Ori stuttered. “I didn’t know it was yours, I just-”

The stranger waved one enormous hand. He wasn’t really that big, around the size of Naru or Gumo, but his head was covered in a long mane of fur that made him look bigger. Ori had never seen anything like him. He had two legs, but four stout arms, and one of his eyes was in the middle of his forehead. No, there was a patch on the other side of his face where a third would be. Aside from the axe, he had several other tools on a belt around his waist. “There’s no need to be frightened, little one! You must be the spirit Tokk and Opher keep telling me about, eh? And here I thought they were playing a joke on me!”

“Tokk and Opher? They’re here too?”

“Well, Tokk might’ve wandered off by now, but I’m sure he’ll be back soon. Opher’s -”

“Right behind you.” Tann pointed. Opher was making his way down the path with a very self-satisfied look on his hairless face.

“Greetings, young explorers! You all made it here more or less in one piece, I see?”

“More or less,” said Eema. The moki who lived near Kwolok’s pond had turned back before the bridge, and it was just the four of them.

“I think you owe me… what was it you bet I was lying, again, Grom?”

“I said ‘I’ll braid my mane if you and Tokk didn’t make it all up.’ But that’s a common Gorlek figure of speech, you understand, not a bet.” Grom sighed and shook his head, but he was smiling. “I didn’t dare hope Niwen was truly home to a Spirit once more.”

“This isn’t home...” Ori mumbled.

But Grom didn’t seem to have heard him. “So, which one of you knocked the wall down?” he asked. “I hope it wasn’t one of you, my building skills must not be what they used to be if a few moki made such quick work of it.”

“It was me,” Ori admitted. “I really didn’t know it was supposed to be there. I thought it was… like the spirit gates. Someone built them for something a long time ago, but whatever that was, now they’re just… in the way.”

“Hmm… well, in a way, you’re right. Most of the wall’s older, but I filled in the gate and tore down the old bridge years ago to keep the Decayed out. With that and the river they can’t cross easily, but Tokk and Opher tell me you’ll be bringing your whole tribe here soon enough -” he turned to the moki - “so I was going to tear it down soon myself. Saves me a trip I suppose – hate to think of you being stuck there all night, though.”

Tann shrugged. “We’d have gotten through one way or another. If Ori couldn’t our next plan was to use Snesh’s head as a battering ram,”

“Who’s ‘we?’ And why mine – if it was yours you’d finally be putting it to some use.”

“You’re the only one who _hasn’t_ been badly hurt on this journey so far, so it’s only fair,” Eema said with a cheeky grin.

But that suddenly wiped the smiles off the three moki’s faces.

“Uhh… how are we going to bring the news back home?” Snesh asked, his ears drooping.

“I don’t know,” Eema said solemnly. “I’m not letting you go back through that death-maze alone.”

“I can go with him,” said Tann. “It’s not bad enough that I can’t jump or climb.”

“You’d still be only two against only the owls know how many Decayed. Even all three of us – even all _four_ of us nearly died too many times.”

“Ori made it to the temple by himself -”

Ori winced. “Uhh… I didn’t really...” His paw startled to tremble at the thought of going back through that. He’d died so many times. And he couldn’t! He had to restore the Wellspring… however he was supposed to do that. He felt terrible, like he was abandoning his new friends. But every minute, every second that passed, the danger Ku was in got worse and worse.

“I can’t ask him to make that journey again – no, _twice_ more, just because we -” Eema’s voice rose to a near shout. Then she abruptly fell silent. “We can’t ask the rest of the tribe to make that journey either. We’ve made it to the Glades, but we didn’t find a safe route for the others. We all have to go back… and find a better way.”

“With your arm hurt like this?” Tann’s voice rose to almost a squeak. “Eema, you can’t – I won’t -”

“If I can’t go somewhere, it means the tribe can’t either.”

“You keep saying that,” said Snesh, “But with everyone working together, that’s more eyes, more paws, more slings and spears. You won’t let us go back on our own, but you think we’ll do better with you needing help to get up trees and not being able to load a sling?”

Eema stiffened. “Are you saying I’m a burden? That I’d just slow you down?” she snarled.

Even though Ori couldn’t pick up the feelings of creatures like moki with both light and dark in them, he felt like the heat had been sucked out of the air. He took one step back, then another. He wanted to say something, anything, to stop this… but what was he supposed to say? This wasn’t his decision anyway.

“I didn’t say that.” Snesh backed away too, but his voice was calm and icy. “I said we wouldn’t be any better off with you. If it’s too dangerous for me and Tann alone, how is it safer with you?”

“It’s not a question of if it’s safer or not, it’s about my duty to you and to the tribe. All of our duty to the tribe!”

“Our duty to the tribe isn’t to commit suicide just because we got lost in that _light-forsaken_ swamp!” Now Snesh raised his voice and stood his ground, his tail held rigid. “I didn’t hear anyone say ‘come back with a route to the glades or don’t come back at all.’”

“Don’t come back at all’s what _you’re_ suggesting, not me.”

“Eema, he has a point.” Tann tried to get between the snarling moki and shove them apart, but Eema sidestepped him.

“Let me handle this,” she hissed.

“Handle _what?_ I said Snesh is right! You can’t _keep_ pushing yourself like this or you’re going to get yourself killed – or get all of us killed! And for what? Your pride?”

“Tokk should show up eventually,” Snesh cut in. “He can take a message back to the tribe – and now that I think about it, he and Opher must have found a better way.” He looked up at the weapon master.

Opher laughed harshly and shook his head. “No such luck! Beyond the statue there are too many bridges that only activate in response to Light techniques – and enough Decayed to slaughter a whole tribe of warriors.”

Ori winced. Lupo had said about the same thing, that they shouldn’t have even considered the path they’d taken. “That’s it! Lupo!” he said as the realization hit him.

“Huh? What about him?” asked Eema.

Ori materialized the partial map the cartographer had given him. “He said he’d mapped out everything in the south here, and I think I met him around here. When he gets here, he could give the finished map to Tokk and Tokk could fly it back, right?”

Eema stared at the paper with an almost bewildered look. “Yes, I… I suppose so.” She sighed. “So everything we’ve done has been a complete waste.”

“You got three moki to the glades. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Uhh… yes, I suppose it does.” She shook her head irritably, but her face broke into a smile. “And learned where _not_ to go.”

“If we hadn’t gone, Lupo would have taken extra time – and extra risk – to prove that there wasn’t a shortcut,” Snesh pointed out. “It looks so tempting when it’s all laid out flat on paper, doesn’t it?”

“That must be how the world looks to Tokk,” said Tann. “Oh – we’ve learned not to trust him for directions too, haven’t we?”

Ori felt bad for the old bird being made fun of, but then remembered the directions Tokk had given him through the caves, and he snorted with laughter. He couldn’t really blame Tokk for leading him into Howl’s territory since he’d warned him about the right path, but still…

“Well, if you’re all done bickering,” Grom said boisterously. “Follow me! I’ll show you around and you can meet the others!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ori watching the moki argue about Eema pushing herself too hard and not taking care of herself when she’s injured: "Nope, this advice is definitely not applicable to me in any way!"


	16. A Haven Again

“Set the wheels in motion again?” Grom spluttered. “Not tonight, you won’t!”

“What? Why not?”

“If those floodgates open a whole lake’s worth of water will come rushing down the valley all at once, right through the glades. I’d say it’ll be up to here.” The Gorlek pointed to a branch well above both his and Ori’s heads. They stood at the tree’s base, not far above what Ori thought was the high water mark of the river. “Not literally since this tree’ll end up piled on the bank somewhere downstream, but I think you get the idea.”

“But… but Kwolok said I should! To make the water clean again!” Ori’s throat tightened at the thought that he wasn’t going to be able to – wasn’t going to be able to do _anything!_ “This is the only-”

“Kwolok means well, but he also doesn’t mind having _his_ home be underwater because it already is!” Grom joked. “I’m not saying it can’t be done – it should’ve been done years ago, just no one’s been able to yet – but I’ll need time to shore up flood barriers and make sure there’s nothing important I have to move to high ground. I’m sure Tuley will need to make preparations as well, and the water level in the marsh might flood the Moki villages down there.”

“How long will it take?” Ori fidgeted nervously, clicking his hoof against a stone. His tail twitched erratically.

“Hmm… I’ll need around a day.”

“A _day!”_ Ori’s voice rose to a shout. He lunged, stopping himself just short of the Gorlek. He didn’t know what he wanted to do – not hurt him, not hit him, but… something to be closer to looking the taller creature in the eye. An entire day? “I can’t wait a day! I told you, Ku’s lost in the – in the Silent Woods! I don’t know if she’s – she’s hurt, or worse, but… I can’t!” His body was alive with jittering, tingling sensations like brushing against pine needles. He had to move, had to run, had to do _something!_ He turned away and started down the path back towards the bridge, breaking into a jog.

“Ori, where are you going?” Voice sounded in his head.

“I’m going back – if Kwolok wants the mill fixed he can do it himself! I’ll find a way, clean water or not!”

“No, you won’t.” She shimmered into existence in front of him. She didn’t have the strength to maintain a physical form all the time, she’d said. “I’ve been in that hollow for a long time, and I know what it’s like better than you. There’s no way past.”

“How do you know? Have you _looked_ for one?”

“No, but the moki have. Some of them have been separated from loved ones for months after fleeing the woods.”

“Well, I’m not a moki.”

Voice was bobbing in front of him, but she abruptly stopped. Ori ducked around her, but felt a flash of anger in her light, like a piece of firewood sending embers flying in his face. “You’re right, you’re not a moki. Moki can survive touching that water better than spirits can.” She moved in front of him again. Ori raised an arm to push her out of the way, but thought better of it. He stood there with his fists balled and shaking at his sides, glaring into the faint white glow.

“If you don’t want to help me...” he tried to keep his voice calm. “Then you can stay with Kwolok too.”

“I _am_ trying to help you Ori. Let’s say you do somehow get yourself into the Silent Woods, and you find your friend? How are you going to get back out?”

“We’ll fly back out. I can tie the feather back on, and...” Ori trailed off. The anger vanished… no, it turned inside-out. He felt cold and weak all over. No. He couldn’t. The feather was gone. He’d lost it, and who knew where the storm had taken it. And that was if Ku wasn’t hurt. “Never… never mind...”

He almost sprinted back to a perplexed-looking Grom. “Is there any way to make it faster? Something I can do to help?”

“No. There might be a thing or two you could help me with, but I don’t know how long Tuley will need, and then you’ll still have to wait until word gets back to the moki tribes – which from what your friends said means we have to wait for Lupo.”

“Ohh...” Tokk had flown back in a while earlier, and said he’d be willing to take a message back to the Owl Meadow Tribe. But how long would the mapmaker take? It had taken Ori and the moki expedition so long to cover that ground, and they hadn’t been exploring, surveying, and charting everything. Ori stared at the ground and swallowed hard. His vision shimmered a little. Nothing… nothing he could do…

“You might as well get some rest,” said Grom. “There’s an old spirit well on the hill near my forge, but it’s broken. I’ve been meaning to get around to fixing it up for the others’ sake, but it doesn’t do me any good.”

The others, before the arrival of the moki, consisted of Tuley and Veral, two creatures a bit like the ground-burrowing rodents that were common in Nibel, but larger. They, and Opher and Tokk and Lupo, and he guessed Twillen since it sounded like Grom and Tokk knew him, were all old friends in some way or another. There’d been an old… village wasn’t the word they used, it sounded more like the city where the Gumon had lived before Nibel’s blindness, in the glades a long time ago, and they wanted to rebuild it because Tuley said it would be the last place the decay would claim. Grom said the Gorleks had had a city once too, but they’d all fled, or been… corrupted, he’d said.

Corrupted. Sein had always said she didn’t know where the monsters had come from. And many of them didn’t look like any natural creature. But some of them, like the frogs and the hornbugs… could it really happen? Could a living creature be turned into one of them? And if it could happen to a creature of darkness… could it happen to a spirit?

* * *

“Doesn’t look like much.” Grom gestured to the pile of scattered, upturned stones. “But I don’t think any of the main stones are broken, just out of place.”

“This one looks broken.”

“You’re right.” Grom grimaced. He picked up a fragment in one enormous hand and inspected it. “Shouldn’t have to cut a new one, though, the others around it will lock the pieces in place.”

Something caught Ori’s eye. He brushed away the leaf litter around something a little like an enormous spirit shard. The elongated crystal was about half his height, and cut in a strange shape that made it hard to tell how many sides it had. It sparkled like the stars in his reflected light, and in some of the facets he could see blurry scenes that didn’t look like the reflection of what was around him. “Whoa...” he murmured. “What’s this one?”

“That’s a warp crystal. That was an improvement we Gorleks helped the spirits make to the spirit wells. They’re supposed to connect them and allow travel across Niwen in the blink of an eye. But as far as I know they all vanished before they could try out what we built them.”

“Travel?” Ori’s ears stood on end. “Can it get me to the Silent Woods?”

“That’s a good question. I don’t honestly know. Someone probably did but they never taught me – probably didn’t expect anyone would have a use for them again.”

“I don’t think so, unless there’s another spirit well in the Silent Woods that has a working crystal,” said Voice. “Otherwise it can only take you to a spirit well you’ve visited before, and you can’t travel back here on a path you haven’t already taken outward. Think of it like a tree’s roots: a root can’t carry water back to the trunk if it hasn’t grown yet.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” said Grom. “The cradle and spindle that held the crystal have rusted away to nothing. I could make a new one, but I’d either need ore, or I’d have to melt down some old tools, and right now I need the metal from those to make new ones to help the Moki build new homes.”

“Ore?” Ori had heard the word before… he knew he had… oh. He rematerialized the rock Mokk the Brave had given him. “This?”

“Oh! Yes, that exactly!” Grom examined the rock. “This is good quality, too. It’ll make the pieces I need to make the warp crystal work, and have some left over. Not enough for something like an axe, but every bit of ore helps. I suppose it does belong to you, though.”

“It’s okay. You can keep it,” Ori said with a nervous smile. He felt a twinge of guilt at giving away Mokk’s gift, but he hadn’t realized how much of his strength it had taken to carry it around all the time. It wasn’t as big and heavy as a keystone, but it was much bigger than the maps or the shards.

“I won’t accept any payment – especially not from someone who’s risked his life for others like you have. I promised I’d make these glades a haven for all who seek refuge here, whether they’re gorlek, moki, whatever in Mora’s name Twillen is, or spirit. I can hold onto it for you if you want, but when you think of something you could use it for, be sure to tell me!”

Ori wanted to help rebuild the Spirit Well. It was the least he could do. He’d started off scampering around fetching tools, brushing moss and lichen away, and bringing charcoal for the blistering-hot fire that would turn the ore into the pieces of metal that held the warp crystal and let it turn to point at the other spirit well. It hurt even being close to the heat, like a little piece of Mount Horu’s fire was right there in the glades. He didn’t know how Grom could stand it. Ori could – it wasn’t as bad as being inside the burning mountain, surrounded by fire and melted rock and choking fumes – but it hurt to hold his head up straight and his mouth and nose were dry from panting all the time. Then the Gorlek’s hammer hit the stone for the first time, and the noise made Ori flatten himself against the wall, his hands pressed to his ears.

Tokk barged into the forge not long after that, and practically dragged Ori out with some excuse about wanting to know more about the old temple and all the statues he’d seen in the swamp. But Ori couldn’t help feeling like he’d been getting in the way, and Tokk had been asked to come to Grom’s rescue. He hadn’t even asked many questions, just nodded and grunted at Ori’s half-coherent answers.

* * *

“Ori! Hey, Ori!”

“Huh?” Ori flinched at the sudden shout, but the voices were familiar and untainted by fear or hostility. The three moki came running up the path. He tore his gaze away from the Wellspring in the distance, and the great wall of earth and stone behind it, and slid down from the low branch to meet them.

“We thought you were in the forge with Grom,” Eema said. She looked towards the red glow and plume of smoke coming from the half-dugout building. “Or by the Spirit Well. Are you all right?”

“Yeah… I’m fine. I just...”

“Couldn’t take all that _decayed_ hammering?” Tann’s voice took on a hint of a growl, and he narrowed his eyes. The rhythmic clanging could still be heard over the rustle of leaves and the slow current of the river. “How is he not deaf yet?”

“Must be those little ears,” said Snesh. “If he can’t hear much as it is, maybe it’s easier. Have you tried stuffing moss in yours, Ori?”

“It’s not the noise, it’s...” Ori winced. No, it sort of was the noise. He’d been jittery for a while, and even if he’d been sure he was welcome he wasn’t eager to go back in there. “I’m nervous about the Wellspring. Grom kept talking about it causing a flood, and… making the gears move again or something. It doesn’t involve climbing to the top of that huge tower and then having it fill with water, does it?”

Tann shrugged. “Shriek knows. No one’s been in there as long as I can remember.”

“I don’t know why the tower _would_ fill with water,” said Eema. “Was there, err, a flood in your homeland? You talked about it decaying the way Niwen has.”

“Not exactly.” Ori explained about the Elements as briefly as he could, both to the Moki and to Voice. He didn’t mention the multiple times he’d drowned trying to get out of the tree as it filled with water, but the moki still shuddered.

“A mountain full of fire and melted rock?” Snesh’s eyes were wide in astonishment. “That’s… that’s hard to even imagine. Stone flowing like water?”

“It was more like mud or… like blood when it’s half-dried and it gets sticky. It crusted over on top, like a scab, but even when the crust was thick enough to walk on it was so hot just touching it burned me, and just breathing the air almost cooked me alive.”

“I think I’m starting to understand how you rush into danger so easily,” Eema said. “If you can walk through a fire and come back out alive, even that fire-spitting beetle must’ve seemed easy, right?”

Ori laughed. “I wish it was like that! If I tell myself things could get worse, it just makes me worry that they will!”

“Don’t mention lightning to a raincloud, right?” Tann said with a grin. “My father always said that! Eema didn’t listen, and she brought the storm the other nigh – oh come on, I told you -”

“Not. A good. Time!” She hissed, gesturing towards Ori with her tail. “Speaking of cooked, Veral said to bring you this.” She picked up a small basket and offered it to him. It was full of nuts, berries, and slices of some sort of root.

“Uhh… thanks.” Ori’s pulse quickened as he took the basket. “Uhh… last night, I’m sorry I...”

“Don’t worry about it,” Tann said firmly. “We already ate, and he says there’s plenty. You need to keep your strength up if you’re going to be climbing that thing… and exploring the Silent Woods.”

“I’m guessing you didn’t find anything in the marshes last night either, right?” Eema asked. “I know last night wasn’t much.”

Ori didn’t answer. He didn’t have the heart to tell her he hadn’t even kept what little he’d eaten down. But hunger was gnawing a hole in the pit of his stomach. He selected a slice of root, sniffed it, and nibbled at it. It was cool and juicy and a little bit sweet.

“Oh. There’s another thing. Can we see that map Lupo gave you?”

“Huh? Yeah. I think he said your tribe would have to go all the way around here into the part that isn’t filled in...”

“I’ve been thinking about that. The worst part’s before the temple by far, isn’t it? But a lot of that was because of trying to avoid all the -”

“Mud and poisoned water?” Ori forced himself to eat another berry, but the memory still made him feel a little sick.

“Exactly. But if they wait until after the Wellspring’s restored, the water will be clean – and if the river’s higher the worst of the mud and spikes will be underwater.”

“Underwater spikes will still be dangerous,” said Snesh. “And I doubt even Lupo’s filled in where every patch is.”

“Yes, but it’ll be possible to swim a lot of the way – maybe even cover enough ground on rafts to make it worth carrying them for the rest. If Tokk goes to warn the village we need a map to give him, so can we copy the parts of this we need?”

“Sure.” Ori handed it to Eema. “It’s kind of yours anyway, it’s just a copy of part of the one Lupo was making for your tribe. Besides, if the Warp Crystal works I might not have to go through this part again anyway...” Ori trailed off. He glanced up at the hill. “Hang on! I think there was a Spirit Well close to your village! If the Warp Crystal works, _I_ could go back!”

“Ori, you’ve done enough for us already. You don’t need to -”

“Need to what? Someone has to warn them about the waters rising, and even if Tokk does it I’d still be stuck waiting for Grom to move things out of the way, right?”

“I suppose. But Tokk’s already said he’s willing, and it might be better for you to get some rest.”

“I know… I will...” Ori’s response was automatic. He _was_ getting some rest! He couldn’t just… sit still and do _nothing_ for a whole day or more, or he was going to lose his mind. “It doesn’t sound like it’ll take all… all day, right?”

“That all depends on their family,” Tann said in a joking tone. Eema and Snesh rounded on him, but couldn’t keep straight faces.

“Okay, that is true!” Snesh laughed. “You’re right – you’d better tell them Grom or Opher’s already halfway up the Wellspring, or you could be there ‘til the moon’s full!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More fun with translating mechanics into story: for 100 Themes of the Blind Forest I decided to treat Spirit Well fast travel as being a “player quality of life” mechanic since it was only added in DE, and story-wise Ori didn’t have that many reasons to backtrack besides “Oh god I need more life and energy cells to not die instantly to anything in Sorrow Pass / Mount Horu.” This time around backtracking to Wellspring Glades especially is important to the story, so I decided Ori needs a little break on quality of life. Especially since I made the spirit wells less useful as actual healing points anyway.


	17. Retracing Steps

“You _broke both your legs?_ ” Opher’s eyes almost bulged out of his head in shock.

“...They got better.” Ori wasn’t sure if he was being scolded for being careless, or if Opher thought he was lying. “I – I wasn’t trying to, I just – I was afraid to try it, but I was being attacked and I didn’t have a choice, and I messed up the timing!”

“It’s all right, Ori. I’m not angry with you.”

_ Just disappointed _ , Ori mentally filled in.

“But a life-or-death battle is the worst place to try a new technique for the first time. You’re very lucky you have that healing ability – I’m sure you know that.”

“Uhh… yeah...” Ori nervously flattened his antennae against his forehead with his hand. Lucky he had the Soul Link, more like. “And that it gave me a few life shards,” he lied. He’d told Naru about the Soul Link, and eventually Gumo. But there’d been so much horror in her reaction that it had _hurt_ – it had hurt to see her break down in tears like that, and he’d never even told her how many times it had brought him back. Some of the Blackgrass Lake moki knew about it, but Ori didn’t want to explain it to anyone else unless he _had_ to. “I… I was scared I’d hurt myself trying to practice it, too.”

“Not unwisely either,” said Opher. “That sounds extremely dangerous. Building up light around your hands and feet to strike harder is a useful skill, but if it takes more Light than you have to use a technique safely, you aren’t ready to use it.”

“But I _was_ ready! I told you, I learned something like it before. I can’t do it the same way, but I know I’m strong enough to do it this way!”

“No, you are not. You need to shield more of yourself at once than you have the strength to, and you are trying to get around that by moving the Light from one part of you to another. That can be done but it has to be between strikes. Doing it in the exact moment a blow lands… no, I do not think that is possible. That is just crazy.”

“No, it is! I know it is! I almost did it when I tried. I know it’s impossible to think about it that fast, but that’s not what I’m trying to do. I want to sort of… bounce it up my body like a ripple.” Ori tried to illustrate with his hands, clapping his palms together and bouncing them apart, but it made less sense than he thought to try to show an idea that wasn’t quite a physical thing that way.

But Opher nodded like he understood, and ran a finger through his chin-hair. “I think I understand what you mean. That… I have not heard of being done, and I would never try in a thousand years, but then again I am not a spirit. I suppose it might be possible, with practice. But it might take a thousand tries to get right, and I doubt you want to break a thousand bones.”

“No...” Ori’s shoulders slumped in dejection. “But I don’t know how to practice it without hurting myself.”

Opher gave him a wry expression. “The simplest way would be to not hit hard enough to injure yourself.”

“I _know_ that!” Ori snapped. “But if I do it gently, how am I supposed to know if I’m doing it right?”

“How do you practice with the Spirit Edge on a blade of grass? How can you be sure it will cut flesh and bone?”

“I don’t, I just… if it doesn’t even cut the grass that means the edge isn’t straight, so… oh.”

“Very good. Now, how do you tell if you have… rippled the light through your body correctly, if you do not strike hard enough to break bones?”

“I… I don’t know.” Ori rubbed his eyes. The sun had set, and daylight was fading fast. He was exhausted. The food had given him a bit more energy, and he’d drunk enough water that his head didn’t feel like it was being split open anymore, even if his nose was still dry. But he couldn’t concentrate on anything for very long, and if he took his mind off of his surroundings he’d catch his eyes sliding out of focus after a few seconds, and his body would just slowly drift to one side until he stumbled and almost lost his balance.

“Well, I cannot tell you, because I have never tried it. You will have to think about that yourself. In the meantime, there was something else you wanted my help with, wasn’t there?”

“Yeah.” Ori shook himself. He wasn’t going to sleep yet. He couldn’t waste any more time. “Actually, it’s… kind of related.”

* * *

“You know… for someone called Voice, you don’t really talk much.”

“You are the one who gave me that nickname,” Voice said with a hint of humor in her tone.

“Well, you’re still the Voice of the Forest, aren’t you?” Ori hopped to the next branch, and then to the top of the dead tree. Lightning had split the trunk a long time ago, and the top half had fallen off, leaving a stump big enough to stand on. He tapped a hoof on the wood – or in the puddle of rainwater that had accumulated on top of it. It seemed solid enough. He leaped into the air, twisted, and pulled himself down just enough to straighten his body out. He gathered the power into his legs and kicked out with both hooves at once, sending half of it down into the stump and half back up his own body. The impact was like… well, it was like kicking an unyielding tree stump with all his strength was supposed to feel. He let out a hiss of pain and stumbled, nearly falling off the top. His back and neck seemed okay, but he felt lightheaded, and while he hadn’t split a hoof this time his joints ached, and something had definitely stretched too far.

“I am, but what does the forest have to say?”

“Someone please put me out of my misery?” Ignoring the pain in his legs, Ori stepped off the top of the stump and let himself fall. He caught himself on a lanternflower that clung to one of the lower branches, but landed in an awkward somersault. One leg was in more pain than the other. With the one that didn’t hurt as badly, he aimed another kick at a protruding root.

There was a noise like one of the Moki’s slingstones hitting wood, and the hiss and buzz of power. Something cracked. The root was thick, but Ori’s hoof left a deep mark in the rotted wood, and pieces of bark were blasted away. A tingling sensation shot up his leg, up his spine all the way to his neck. Better. Closer. He’d pulled that off a couple times already, but he couldn’t get it right with both feet at once, and he needed to be able to do it consistently before he could even think of trying to smash through a barrier with it.

Opher had given him two things to practice. The first was making Stomp less dangerous to himself than to his target. The second was another familiar power: Spirit Flame.

Ori had asked the weapon master if he knew anything that didn’t need him to be able to use all his limbs. He’d run into trouble more than once because Spirit Edge was awkward to use one-handed and even worse when one leg wouldn’t bear his weight. Spirit Smash was so unwieldy he could sort of use it to his advantage to yank himself one way or another with its weight, like he had against the Hornbug. Spirit Arc was completely worthless without one hand to hold the bow and another to draw it back.

Opher had shown him a new, and yet not new way of using it. He compressed all the energy together to keep it from being wicked away, sort of like creating any of the other Light weapons, but instead of shaping it he just left it as an orb that could act as a sort of focus. If Ori thought about it it wasn’t really different from how he’d used it with Sein helping channel the power, except now he was creating the focus with his own light.

He’d asked for Voice’s help, of course. It would’ve been much easier if he she could focus his light and help direct it. Making the focusing orb was so tiring, even more than the Spirit Arc. But she didn’t know how, and Ori didn’t know how to explain it properly. It left him curious how  _ Sein _ had known. Had she learned how before, with another spirit? Or was the knowledge something Voice had lost in her current state?

Ori was expecting the little orb to laugh at his joke, or say she thought they were talking about the forest. But it seemed like she was more offended. Offended and silent. For a while, at least.

“I’m sure it’s easy for you to say that, Ori,” she replied calmly. “This land isn’t your home – as you keep reminding me. You haven’t watched it die.”

“I… I wasn’t trying to… I just wanted to… never mind.” Why did he always say the wrong thing? He’d been afraid he would around the moki, that he’d do something like refusing an offer of hospitality that would badly hurt the feelings of his new friends’ family. He might have done it even though he was trying not to. They’d invited him to spend the night, and he’d had to say at least five times that he had to warn the other two tribes too, and he couldn’t stay. And they’d seemed… guarded when he left.

They were nice. They were almost  _ too _ nice, so friendly it was almost overwhelming. He’d been mentally prepared for them to have questions about the map, about the journey, and about the three warriors who’d gone of the search for Kwolok’s guidance and a new home. He’d been worried that they would be angry about the flood that he would have to cause. But the worst he heard was some of the older moki grumbling that it was about time someone fixed the old mill. There were several others of Tann’s old tribe there, who had family either under Kwolok’s protection or that had stayed behind in the Silent Woods.

The young moki, the pups, were almost the strangest part. They were so lively and curious – at least, the ones that weren’t half asleep. They reminded him of his younger siblings whenever he visited them in the Hollow Grove, except the young moki were so much  _ smaller _ than their parents. He knew most creatures grew larger – Ku had, and she’d only begun to – but she’d rapidly grown to near his size and then slowed down.

It would have been helpful, he thought, if Voice could have said more then. He guessed Sein never had to because there’d never been anyone to talk to during Nibel’s blindness. He’d spoken a few words to Gumo, and Sein had talked to him while Ori was unconscious, but other than that they were the only ones.

  
  


The Lanternflowers, and sometimes the projectiles of the spittle-slugs and occasionally spiders, made getting around Inkwater Marsh much easier, but it was still long after midnight when Ori made his way to the southern part of the swamp. There wasn’t a storm tonight, but it had been spitting rain since a little after dark and clouds covered the sky. If his fur wasn’t so wet it would have been standing on end as he imagined Howl’s glowing eyes appearing around every corner, behind every tree.

He felt a bit safer in the dark swamp now that he could use most of the abilities he’d learned from Nibel’s ancestral trees, or at least something similar. And he hadn’t gotten himself killed since… since a couple times after the Hornbug’s attack when he’d been separated from the moki again – or, he’d gone to scout ahead on purpose. But the gloom and the noise of raindrops on leaves and water making it hard to hear anything coming up behind him still made him tense. He tiptoed through the brush, hiding his light in any undergrowth that wasn’t covered in thorns, afraid he’d make a wrong turn and find himself in that horrible place full of bones again. He couldn’t really blame Mokk for not wanting to go alone. Or at all.

“I think you’re going in circles,” said Voice. “That’s the third time I’ve seen that tree.”

“I know I’m going in circles!” Ori snapped. Something moved in the distance. He almost jumped out of his skin. Just one of the slimes… he was outside the reach of its needles, nothing to worry about yet. He took a deep breath. It wasn’t her fault he was lost. “I think I’ve seen it too – before I met you. Their village has to be somewhere close, but I can’t tell _where!_ ” He rubbed his eyes, staring out into the gentle rain for any sign of the fires the moki normally had lit. But there was nothing but the eerie glow of a few fungi and corruptions. “If this place is like the Misty Woods...”

If he’d started from the other Spirit Well, the one near here, Ori thought, he was sure he could have found his way. But according to Grom the Warp Crystal could only be used about twice in a day before it drained the spirit well. Even once meant they were almost useless for healing for a while. Three times in total, going to different wells, Grom wasn’t sure about but he’d said if it was even possible it would leave the well in the Glades dormant for a while, so if he went back he’d probably waste half the night, then be stuck either in the Glades or out here.

No, now he was certain, this place  _ was _ familiar. It helped that this part of the marsh he’d first seen in the storm. And then… he found it.

“Oh no...” Ori whispered. “This can’t...”

The fires weren’t lit, but there was enough light to make out the shapes of the ruined huts, because of all the corruptions that were crawling over them.

He set the Soul Link near the edge of the water and jumped from tree trunk to tree trunk, making it across the largest gap with the help of a spittle-slug that he shot with Spirit Arc to provoke it into giving him something to jump off of. He thanked the monster by sweeping it away with Spirit Smash, sending it flying into the dark water where it writhed and disintegrated. The rest soon followed.

The village was empty now. Ori and Voice were alone in the darkness. The dwellings had been torn apart, and there were scorch marks and smokey scents where fires must have been put out by the rain. There were a couple of broken spears, embedded in the shriveled husks of long-destroyed corruptions. But there were no bodies. It was nothing like the Gumon’s ruined city. Ori hoped he would never see anything like that place again.

“It is possible that at least some of them escaped.” Voice’s tone was gentle.

“Or they all got eaten. Or drowned.” Ori watched the limp carcass of a slasher disappear beneath the oily surface of the swamp. Not even the corruptions could survive the poisonous water.

“It’s possible, but moki are quite good at running away from things. The very young, very old, or sick less so, but it’s unlikely they were _all_ killed without any bodies being left.”

Ori nudged a crooked door. It broke free of its hinges and fell with a loud clatter, almost startling him into falling off the thick reed mat into the swamp. The hut around it had been caved in. An unsettling thought occurred to him. “What if Howl got them? Mokk said he eats moki sometimes.” He remembered how big the broken fang seemed in both of their hands. It somehow made even more apparent the sheer size and power of its owner – maybe because he hadn’t exactly spent time that close to those fangs when they were attached to a pair of gnashing jaws that were trying to kill him.

“I have never seen Howl myself,” said Voice. “He never came near Kwolok’s part of the marsh. But the moki here have survived for many, many years. I think if Howl wanted to eat them, and could, he would have a long time ago.”

“How’s that different if the Decayed did it? They kept them away this long too, didn’t they? So why… why now?”

“I don’t know, Ori,” Voice said sadly. “This land has been dying for a long, long time, but I think the last breath is close.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to My Guardian Spirit Academia, where Ori's total disregard for his own safety appalls everyone around him.
> 
> Also, 50k words lol.


	18. The Silent Teeth

“You see, most of the water feeding the Great River comes from two places,” Lupo said excitedly as he traced its course on the map he’d stretched out over the top of a large stump. “The snow high up in the mountains of Baur’s Reach, and springs in the Luma Pools. Where they meet, the ancients built a great dam stretching across the entire valley, creating Drownedtree Lake, and the Wellspring to harness its power.” 

The cartographer had reached the Wellspring Glades at dawn, not long before Ori returned using the spirit well near Howl’s Den. It seemed that Grom and the others had less to do to prepare than expected, or the work had gone faster with Tokk, Opher, and the moki helping. It was just past noon, and Ori was itching to leave for the mill, alone or not. He was trying to listen to Lupo’s explanation, but his attention was torn between worrying about Mokk’s tribe and trying to stay awake without the motivation of being in mortal danger. He’d searched for them until the sun came up, but he had to admit defeat in the end. And Voice had a point: if the village was already abandoned, there wasn’t that much of a point to warning them.

“If the old legends are to be believed, the dam was built over one of the Spirit Willow’s roots,” added Tokk. “Hard to imagine moving all that earth and stone otherwise, so I’m inclined to believe them.”

Ori stared at the map. It didn’t make sense. Well, it sort of made sense, he could read it, but it didn’t make what he was  _ doing _ make sense. “If the water comes from up here… and down the river...” he said, “Why’s the Wellspring important? Why doesn’t the river just rise until it goes over the dam?” An entire lake held back by an artificial mountain seemed insane, but then again the moki had felt the same way about Mount Horu. The dams Ori knew of in Nibel were relatively small, turning streams and meadows into pleasant ponds. But the stream still continued past them.

Grom leaned over the map. “Because it was built tall enough! Before it was here the spring thaw from Baur’s Reach would rush down the river and flood half of Inkwater Marsh. With the meltwater all held back in the lake, though, it could be released more gradually. It can’t be allowed to overtop the whole dam, or it’d wash it out, but there are channels to let the water through if necessary. High water’s a lot better than what would happen if the dam burst and the whole lake got released all at once.”

“But there _hasn’t_ been a spring thaw in the mountains for a long time,” said Lupo. “Not much of one, at any rate. And that means less water from Baur’s Reach. Not enough to overflow into the channels.”

“Or rise above the main floodgates, mind you,” added Grom. “So with them closed the only water getting through is what seeps underneath, and smaller rivers that join downstream of here – like Rimefloe Creek here. But it’s not much. Right now the water’s higher from all the rain we’ve gotten, but most of this summer it’s been low enough I’ve been worried about those mantises just jumping across the riverbed.”

Tuley was a short ways back from the rest of the group, leaning against a tree, but he nodded and stood up. “That’s right – and it’s filthy and stagnant, too. I s’pose if what’s underneath the dam’s really a part of the Weeping Ridge and the water’s seeping through that rotted mess that’d explain it.”

“Yeah, but… what does the mill have to do with it? Kwolok said to make the wheels move again, but if the water’s trapped then wouldn’t I need to open the gates on the dam to let it out?”

“That’s exactly what you need to do,” Grom said. “But the main floodgates are enormous – a thousand moki, a thousand gorleks, even the great Baur couldn’t lift them! They’re lifted by ropes attached to some of the Wellspring’s water wheels, and there are smaller sluicegates to set those wheels in motion. Those might be water-driven too, but I’ve never seen the plans so I can’t say for sure.”

“If the plans are anywhere, they’d be at the top of the mill.” Opher lifted himself to his feet using his staff. He stretched and yawned. “There’s rumors of an old library up there. Might do some exploring of my own. Care to join us?”

Grom raised an eyebrow. “Seems more likely you’d find texts about building than fighting in that place.”

“Ah. One might think so, but in my travels I’ve found creatures don’t often go to the trouble of building a library for books about just one subject. Since the tower’s higher than the dam, it’d be a safer, drier place than anything downstream of it.”

“Hmm...” Grom shrugged. “In any case, it’s tempting, but I’ll soon have a lot of work on my hands. Their tribe will need new homes -” he pointed to the group of moki. Eema was the only one even trying to stay awake, and she was slumped over the tree stump, feebly trying to keep her head propped up. “And the sooner the better. There’s some old dwellings that could be patched up, there’s all those thorns to clear out, and there’s tools to make for all of that if I can put together enough scraps to melt down…”

“Bah! That and you’re afraid of heights!” Tokk scoffed, but his eyes had a good-natured gleam.

“And so what if I am? Not all of us have wings, you know! I’ll admit I’ve never gotten on well with ladders.” He adjusted his eye patch.

“Is that how you lost that?” Ori asked.

“Huh? This? No, had a run-in with one of those spine-shooting slimes a long time ago. But it very well could have been a fall. I’m not small and bouncy like a moki. My kind don’t belong up in the trees, and I don’t see that old pile of timber and rubble as being much different!”

“Small and bouncy?...” Eema muttered. She exchanged a knowing glance with Ori and tapped her injured arm. “Not enough, apparently.”

Ori couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across his face. He wasn’t sure why, it wasn’t really a funny subject. But Eema and the other two moki had been joking about it all last evening. “I don’t know. I think you landed hard enough to bounce a  _ little... _ ”

They both cracked up, and Grom finally noticed the joke. “Oh! Oh, I -” He rubbed his temple sheepishly. “Well, that proves my point even more, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose it does,” laughed Opher. “If you fell out of a tree you’d probably snap every branch on the way down!”

* * *

“And I think I’ve...” Ori paused as the thin, supple branch flexed under his weight. It wobbled dangerously, and the smooth bark was slick underfoot. He crouched and leaned forward, making sure he had a hold of it before letting his feet slide off and swinging himself around and around until he was going fast enough that just letting go sent him as he as he could jump. He kicked off the grabgrass-covered wall, then a nearby lanternflower, and reached solid ground again. “Mostly got the timing right,” he continued, a little short of breath. He rematerialized the spirit shard that let him anchor himself to walls and made sure it was still secure in the cord around his wrist. The shard stopped him from slipping, but he needed to slip for the swing-jump. That move was always nerve-wracking, especially this close to the water. If he lost his grip, or let go at the wrong time, there wouldn’t be time to use the air-jump to catch himself.

“What does _mostly_ mean?” Opher made his way up more cautiously, hooking his staff over the branch close to the trunk. He thrust it into the heart of a spinebush with a grunt of exertion and vaulted up to the same wall as Ori. He clung to it for a moment, and jumped more deliberately, making it past the spikes only by inches. Ori winced, but he had never seen his teacher make a mistake. He’d made a couple since they’d set off up the river, but no fatal ones yet.

The Wellspring was farther away than it looked, and the terrain in between was all choked with spikes, snapjaw vines, and stagnant water. There were supposed to be four of them making the journey to the old mill: Ori to free the waters, Opher to investigate the library at the top, Lupo to create a map of its interior, and Tokk to ‘have a poke around’ as he put it. Five counting Voice. Ori hadn’t seen Lupo for a while, though, and he didn’t see how the mapmaker would even get through this horrible swamp. Tokk, on the other hand, hadn’t bothered waiting for everyone without wings.

The sun would have been still up, but they were so close now they were in the shadow of the dam. It looked more like a hillside, and tall conifers covered its flanks, but he could sort of see how the valley continued on the other side. The stone tower of the watermill, and its colossal wheels – so big the frameworks were made out of whole tree trunks – loomed over everything.

“I… I know this place...” Voice said uncertainly. “I don’t think I’ve been here in quite this way, but I remember it.” Her light felt a little stronger than before. “The water in these pools used to be so fresh and clean, and it tasted of the mountains.”

“What do mountains even taste like?” Ori asked. “Wait… how do you know what _anything_ tastes like?”

“I don’t know, Ori. I’m not sure if I could explain it to you even if I remembered. I used to be… so much more than what I am now.”

“The Spirit Willow?” Ori remembered Sein saying that while she was the Spirit Tree’s sight outside the clearing where he stood, she could also share his sensations… his connection to the Earth, through his roots and leaves and bark. Did trees taste through their roots?

“I think so. Kwolok has said I was a part of the Willow, at least… You know, if you really want to find out, you could -”

“Forget it,” Ori snapped. He felt Voice’s light prickle a little, and hoped she could feel the same thing. “I already know what it’ll taste like now, and… no. I’m not stupid.”

“Ori, I was making a joke.” Voice floated after him as he stomped up the slope towards the base of the tower. “I didn’t expect you to do it. Why are you acting like I’d trick you into poisoning yourself?”

“This isn’t _funny,”_ he said through clenched teeth. “I’m just – I -” He shook his head violently, trying to clear the hazy, foggy feeling of exhaustion. He aimed a kick at a tree stump, thought better of it, then thought worse of it again. He leaped into the air and pulled himself down. It was as fast as blinking – the fall, the buildup, the kick, the shock traveling through his body. Spots of color exploded in his vision, and he staggered away, his legs aching. He was breathing harder than he should have been for this amount of exertion – he had been for a while – and it got worse when he looked up at the ancient structure reaching almost into the clouds. But his hooves had left deep impressions in the rotted wood of the stump, and the whole thing was split down the middle. He tried to force a smile onto his face. “I got it… If I can… if I can keep doing it like that consistently, then...”

“You’re trying to change the subject again,” Voice said. “Ori, I know you’re worried about Ku, but… right now you’re making me worry about _you._ You’ve been short-tempered all day – even more than you were before. It’s like you’re _looking_ for a fight.”

“I’m not looking for a fight! It’s… I’m not...” The rush of anger drained away like water through a loosely woven basket, and Ori’s voice faded to almost nothing. “Your jokes aren’t making me feel any better going into this place… especially not ones about me dying.”

“This place… Are you frightened of it?”

Ori hesitated. He swallowed hard. “Yeah.” For some reason, it wasn’t as easy to admit it to Voice. “I… kind of know this place too. Not it, but one a lot like it. I almost died there.” Really, he had died there, and many times, but the Ginso Tree was the place he’d come closest to dying for good, dying in a way the Soul Link couldn’t bring him back. There were a couple other times where it had been buried under ice or lava, but he’d gotten away – and he knew luck was involved some, but he’d still been quick enough. With the Element of Waters, though, he hadn’t been. He’d drowned in the rising water, more than once, and it was  _ only  _ by luck that it had drained away enough to give him another chance. “It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“What doesn’t matter?”

“Doesn’t matter if I’m scared, or – or – or hurt, or – whatever happens to me it doesn’t matter. I’m not turning back.”

He jogged ahead to catch up with Opher, but there was no need to hurry. He’d been stopped in his tracks by a pair of weathered, but very sturdy-looking doors. The weapon master threw up his hands in frustration. He addressed Ori cheerfully, but Ori could feel his aura buzzing and crackling with annoyance – and he rarely felt any strong emotion from Opher.

“Oh, hello again, Spirit. You wouldn’t happen to have found a tree that taught you to fly back there, would you?”

“Uhh… no?” Ori had a feeling from Opher’s sarcastic tone that he wasn’t looking for an answer anyway.

“Then I’m afraid this door might well be the end of both our journeys. I’ve tried everything I can think of to get it open, but to no avail.”

“How many ways are there to open a door?”

Opher scowled. “You’re not about to tell me to try pulling instead of pushing, I hope?”

“No.”

“Good. I can’t see the hinges, and there’s no visible latch or lock.”

“Most of the doors or gates I’ve seen have special stones that need to fit into them,” Ori suggested. “Like the Spirit Gates, or -”

“Or that ridiculous statue?”

“Yeah. The Water Vein, the Gumon Seal, the Sunstone...”

“Well, I’ve thought of that, but there’s no recess for such an item to fit into. I’ve tried pushing, pulling, sliding, pulling those handles back and knocking on it… even speaking to it, but it just won’t budge.”

“Speaking to it?” Ori repeated skeptically.

“Yes. I’ve come across a couple of doors that had to be spoken to – although if it needs a specific word or phrase, there’s no hope.”

“What about that switch over there?”

“Hmm? Yes, I’ve tried that as well, but it doesn’t seem to do anything. Hopefully the mechanism hasn’t just fallen into disrepair after all these years.”

Ori walked up to the doors. He formed the Spirit Edge in the heavier, chopping shape Opher had showed him, and swung with all his strength. The blade broke on impact and left his palms stinging. It left a deep scratch in the weathered, half-rotted wood, but it was just that, a scratch.

“Really?” asked Voice.

“It was worth trying.” Ori jumped up onto the handle. They seemed to be the same material Grom worked with, but heavily discolored and pitted with age. They were also well above even Opher’s head, and easily big enough to stand on. “Do you think they were just made for someone really big? No one I’ve seen could even reach these.”

“Hmm… I doubt it. I’ve never heard of any creatures in Niwen that could use them. More likely they’re meant to attach chains to to keep the doors closed. Although it could be they’re to tie ropes to so a large group can work together to slide them open. Otherwise they’re too heavy without some sort of counterweight or… ah, I wish Grom had come with us.”

“Do you think they could be opened and closed by water too?”

Opher laughed. “That would be quite a dilemma, wouldn’t it? You have to set the wheels in motion to open the doors, but you have to open the doors to set the wheels in motion. Well, after the statue that needed its eyeballs put back in, I suppose anything’s possible! Tell you what, why don’t you poke around and see if you can get some of those wheels down there moving? I’ll look for another way in that’s of any use to anyone but Tokk.”

“Well… I guess these might be to the doors...” Ori muttered. “Hey, I think this one might be moved by that switch!” He pointed to a plate of thick planks, suspended on guide rails over a carved stone channel.

“How can you tell?” Voice asked.

“It’s still dripping!” Ori’s voice echoed off the walls of the stone building dug into the side of the dam. It was dark, with just feeble light shining through holes in the roof, but he could see the water falling from the soaked wood. There was water everywhere here, flowing down several different channels, but nothing dripping quite like that.

He climbed up the pillars and scaffolding to where the water that the switch must have just released cascaded down over a stationary wheel. Many of the paddles had rotted through, but it was still striking plenty of them. “If the water’s flowing, why isn’t it turning?”

“That’s an excellent question, Ori,” Voice said. “Perhaps Grom would know the answer?”

“Yeah… I guess I’ll go ask -” Ori cut himself off. He groaned and rubbed his temples, then closed his eyes and dug his fingers into his eyelids so hard it made painful colored spots appear in his vision. He had to stay alert… had to keep his focus… “Not funny. If you’re not going to _help_ , you could just stay quiet.”

“Earlier you were complaining that I didn’t say enough,” she replied testily.

“I wasn’t – I – I just wanted -”

“Just wanted _what?_ Ori, I’m doing everything in my power to help you, but I don’t know what you’re expecting me to do. Just – have answers to everything?”

“You were around when this place was built, weren’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, I was, but – I’ve told you a hundred times, I can’t remember! All that’s left are little pieces. My mind is _broken_ , Ori! And I wish you wouldn’t keep reminding me of it!” Voice sounded like she was about to cry, and a wave of confused, _hurt_ emotions washed over Ori. He flinched, and shrank back against the scaffolding.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to!” He took as deep a breath as he dared. Short, rapid ones seemed to make staying awake easier. “I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad about it, I just…” He wanted to apologize and forget the conversation had ever happened, but his own anger wouldn’t be washed away either. “It’s like any time you can’t remember something you give up. I hardly know _anything_ about this place, and I can barely think straight either, and -” Ori forced back a lump in his throat. “If neither of us knows the answer, can you at least try to help me think about it and guess?”

Voice sighed. “I can try. All right… perhaps there isn’t enough water?”

“Maybe.” Ori balanced on the edge of the channel and made his way upstream to where it came through the wall. It was partially blocked by spines. Odd, bulbous spines that almost seemed to pulsate… or were they just moving in the current, or was he just seeing things that weren’t there? “There’s still a lot coming through, though. Do you think I should try to cut those away, or…” He tried to remember if there was anything like these in Nibel. Gumo had made him a little wheel that spun in a breeze, or even with a strong breath, as a toy. He’d said the Gumon used them to harness the power of the Element of Winds. But those were a bit different. The air pushed on the entire wheel, but these had a waterfall coming down only on one side. It should have been pushing on it and making it turn.

“Do you think it’s stuck?” he asked.

* * *

The sun had gone down. The sky outside still had a little light, but it was dark inside the mill, and with the constant noise of the wheels clanking and groaning it was hard to hear. Ori kept thinking he heard something, or saw something, creeping up behind him, and whirling round with a weapon ready, but most of the time it was nothing. There were few Corruptions in here. He’d only really seen a couple slimes and Skeetos. But there was danger enough without them.

The ever-present spines of decay seemed to love overgrowing the few ladders and scaffolds that hadn’t rotted and collapsed, and often the only way up was by climbing the wheels and shafts themselves. It was precarious enough when they were stationary. If he was lucky things were covered in the plant Tuley called Grabgrass, but most of the wheels were encrusted either with spikes or with the strange pulsating fibrous and bulbous growths that ran through the Wellspring like the roots of some evil plant. They were so thick that they gummed up some of the wheels completely. Ori had cut or burned them away enough in places to let the gears move again, like he’d done with the ones that opened the door, but they’d rendered large areas impassable. There were bones caught in the masses of tendrils too. He didn’t want to know what would happen if he touched them. Corrupted water was everywhere – running through channels, splashing off wheels, dripping down curtains of slimy algae.

And then there were the moving wheels. The grabgrass covering some of them was a good foothold when still, and with the wheels’ motion if he grabbed onto them and let go at the right time he could fling himself past more dangerous obstacles. But he knew it was dangerous. He’d seen one Skeeto get its nose stuck in the soft rotting wood of a gear and get slowly drawn into it and crushed to pulp. And he’d gotten one hoof caught in the grabgrass and been yanked around and around in circles by the wheel, wrenching his leg back and forth, until he finally managed to cut himself free. He hadn’t been flung into anything that dangerous, but he hit the ground hard, and even when he healed his leg, he was so dizzy he could barely stand up for a while afterwards.

He was kind of glad Opher hadn’t seen that. They’d split up after entering the Wellspring. Opher’s only goal was reaching the top, but Ori didn’t really know where he was going. The main floodgates were up at the top of the dam, but who knew where the wheels that raised them were. Who knew what half of them were even  _ for? _ But if he set them all in motion, he thought, eventually he’d find the right ones. Hopefully. If they weren’t among the many broken ones.

  
  


“Ori, it doesn’t look like these are connected to anything. I don’t think -”

“I know they aren’t. I need them to get up to that ledge.” Ori tiptoed along the narrow beam over a cistern of stagnant, poisonous water. The small sluice gate was stuck, but Ori hit it with Spirit Smash until it came apart and water poured through… more water than he’d expected. A pair of large water wheels roared to life, as did the gears connected to them. The wheels at the other end of a long belt, though, didn’t move. They were stuck fast, and Ori couldn’t reach them. The belt slid, then snapped. With all the resistance gone, the wheels spun faster and faster, and the roar became a scream.

“Oh. That’s… faster than I expected.” Ori’s ears fell. He tried not to hold them closed to protect against the horrible grinding, rattling noise. He’d need his arms free in a second anyway. “Didn’t somebody say something about stuffing moss in your ears?”

“I think it was one of the moki.”

“Oh. Yeah.” The beam underfoot rattled and vibrated. Ori turned around to look for some way, any way, of making the gears above him slow down a bit. Nothing – the sluice gate was gone, and the hollow tree trunk pipe feeding the cistern was keeping up with the water draining away.

“Be careful,” Voice warned.

“I am being caref- aah!” Ori stumbled. His hooves slid out from under him. He caught himself on the edge of the beam just in time to avoid falling between the water wheel and its supports. He dragged himself back to the safety of solid ground and tried to dig the splinters out of his paw without much success. It was getting harder and harder to see, harder and harder to even make his hands move that precisely because they wouldn’t stop shaking.

He’d have to launch off at least two wheels – one just a bare cog with no grabgrass on it – to reach the ledge. But it was going so fast, the teeth almost in a blur. He paused, clinging to a wall at what seemed like the best place to jump from. No, just – aim for the spoked sides. Aim for the sides, or spring off the axle, double jump back to the teeth and leap off them, or… No. He couldn’t overthink it, or he’d get so nervous he’d mess something up.

But then disaster struck. It struck so fast he wasn’t even sure what he’d done wrong, at some point after launching himself off the first wheel. In midair he’d seen he was going the wrong direction, but his mind just… went blank. Blind, useless panic hit him, and then the wheel did. His body was wrenched sideways and up and around, and then he was falling and the world was spinning nauseatingly around him, and he tried to move to right himself before he hit the floor but his body wouldn’t respond.

At first, he thought he’d just been struck by the teeth and kicked away. But when he tried to get up, it wasn’t even that his legs couldn’t support his weight, it was like there  _ wasn’t _ anything to support his weight. The pain didn’t hit until he looked down, like his mind couldn’t even understand the sensation until he saw it with his own eyes. But when it did, it consumed everything.

His lower half was crushed beyond recognition. Splintered pieces of bone jutted from mangled, pulped flesh, and skin and fur hung in ragged flaps. One hoof twitched uselessly. Instincts made him try to rise again, try to crawl away, but his body just… folded.

Ori’s scream almost tore his throat out. The air was driven from his lungs so violently he thought they’d be forced out under his ribcage and join the other unrecognizable pieces of him on the floor, but somehow he took another breath, and it came out as a scream too. His ears were ringing. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything but lie there with what was left of his body shivering and twitching as hot, metallic-smelling liquid poured out onto the rotted floorboards.

He was going to die. He knew he was doing to die, but he still feebly raised one hand and tried to gather what strength he had left into a pulse of healing. It didn’t do anything. Of course it didn’t. Nothing could even  _ begin _ to heal this. It couldn’t even make any of the pain go away.

“Ori! No!” Voice’s form flickered and flitted aimlessly from side to side. “You can’t – you can’t just -” She was completely panic-stricken, unable to speak properly, and her fear and anguish only fed Ori’s further. He tried to curl into a ball. Violent, choking sobs wracked his broken form. Each one seemed to wring more of his blood out like water from a bundle of moss and leaves.

“Ori! Are you okay? What happened?” That was Opher. Ori heard his staff clatter to the ground, but he didn’t say a word. His teacher’s face swam into view through a haze of tears. “Ori, breathe – just keep breathing. Don’t give up. Can your healing ability -”

“No!” Ori choked out. Everything was going numb now. His vision became blurred and dark. “I didn’t mean – I didn’t mean to, it was too fast! I’m sorry I -”

“Shh… shh… Ori, you don’t need to apologize for anything. This isn’t a time for regrets.” He held a hand to Ori’s forehead. Ori pressed himself against the warmth, against the touch, with the last of his strength. The last thing he remembered was someone holding his hand as his life slipped away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. It’s been a while since I needed to look up really disturbing pictures of mutilated or dead animals or people as a writing reference, but looks like that streak is just as broken as Ori’s no-deaths streak. This chapter is brought to you in part by: the goriest roadkill photos I could find on the internet, and also by Private Browsing for not ruining my search suggestions.
> 
> Buuuut the real reason this chapter was so hard to write was constantly fighting my instinct to overanalyze all the technological aspects of the Wellspring. What do any of these wheels even do? How does the water get to the top (in the game at least)?
> 
> Shoutout to TPerson1 in the comments! I know you've been waiting for this moment for a while now, and it's been so hard staying coy about it while this chapter's been sitting in my "buffer." Unfortunately the mokisquad aren't involved, but stay tuned for Voice and Opher's reaction!


	19. Set in Motion

“You _idiot!_ ” Voice shouted. “You had the power to come back from _death,_ and you never thought to tell me?”

“I’m sorry...” Ori whimpered. He shrank back away from the sting of her anger. It was almost physically _painful._ He’d never felt anything like this in his life… no, he had, just not from a creature of the light. Not Naru either – she lost her temper occasionally, but he’d never seen her _this_ angry. Kuro… Kuro was worse. Much worse. Except it had almost been easier to withstand Kuro’s fury, because as much as her hatred had been directed at him, and as much as he’d blamed himself, he’d known that he hadn’t _really_ done anything to deserve it. This time… this time, he knew he had. “I’m sorry, I thought -”

“No! You didn’t think, Ori! You didn’t think at all about how you’d affect others, and – I thought I’d lost you! You made me think you were _dead!_ Do you have any idea – do you even understand how worried and frightened that made me? – and Opher too!”

“Yes!” Ori sobbed. “I didn’t – didn’t mean to!” He’d been on the edge of tears before she’d said a word. He was used to it still hurting a bit after he came back, but it was _bad_ this time. His legs and tail kept going between hurting and being numb and tingly, and the muscles in his belly and back kept cramping if he tried to stand up. He ran his hand through his fur again. He had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t split open like an overripe peach crushed under a stone. And Voice and Opher’s reaction was like smashing the sluicegate open. Tears were streaming down his face, and he huddled against the wall, shaking. “I didn’t want to – I just -”

“Thought _what?_ What were you possibly thinking to lie to us like this?”

“All right, Voice, I think he gets the point,” Opher said. He was calmer, but Ori could feel the tension in his aura. 

“I didn’t lie.” He hadn’t told the truth, but he hadn’t lied. He’d given a vague answer, and Voice hadn’t really _asked._

Opher raised an eyebrow. “What about when you asked me to find your sister?”

Ori blinked in confusion. “I said that?”

“You did,” said Voice. “You also called me Sein.”

“...Oh. I don’t even remember...”

Opher sighed. “I suppose that must have been the blood loss talking. I wouldn’t expect anyone to be coherent in that state… still, you had plenty of opportunities to tell either of us the purpose of that flame before.

“I… didn’t want you to worry.” As soon as Ori said it out loud, he knew how stupid it sounded. And the look on Opher’s face confirmed it.

“Oh, well you did an excellent job of that!” he said sarcastically. “You know, at my age if it weren’t for my constant training to stay in good condition, my heart might have given out from that fright!”

Voice joined in again. “You didn’t want us to worry, so you thought you’d make it a surprise? Is that it?”

“No!” Ori shook his head vigorously. “I thought – I thought -” His voice broke again. It took several more sharp, throat burning breaths before he could form a single word. “When I told Naru it just – just made her cry, and didn’t change anything, and… I know how hard it was for Sein, before, and… I just didn’t want anybody worrying about me like that again! I was trying to stay away from everyone else! I didn’t ask you to come with me, and I didn’t know you’d be here too -” he looked at Voice and Opher in turn, “And when Kwolok had you come with me I hadn’t died in a while so I thought I’d gotten the hang of it and didn’t need to!” 

The phantom pain was fading. Ori got up shakily, leaning on the wall for support. But even though his body didn’t think it was injured anymore, it didn’t want to move. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. Just don’t worry about me. I’m fine now… see? And I didn’t get sent back that far.” Ori had considered just setting the Soul Link outside the Wellspring,  _ just in case _ something happened that left it underwater. But the further in he got, the more anxious he felt about having to climb all that way, and risk his life on all those spinning wheels, all over again. He’d learned that lesson early. One mistake could mean death, but it didn’t always stop at just one, not if there were close calls leading up to that point and he wasn’t as lucky the second time. “I’m okay… let’s just go. I’ll get it right this time.”

He started towards the passageway that led back to the wheels that had caused his death. But Opher blocked his way.

“Hold on. Hold on. You don’t look fine to me. I think you should get some rest after what you’ve been through.”

“I did rest. It doesn’t take _that_ long to get back to norm – ow!” Ori tried to walk around Opher, keeping his distance from him, but the staff reached out like a vine and caught his ankles. The next thing he knew he was facedown on the rotted planks, his head ringing.

Opher shook his head disapprovingly. “That’s even worse than I thought. I expected you to trip, but your reflexes are so slow you couldn’t even catch yourself from falling flat on your face. You’ll only get yourself killed again like this.”

“Great. If you wanna help, tell me a better way to get up there instead of making it _worse_ by hitting me over the head.” Ori stalked away, tail lashing. He wiped away tears. They just wouldn’t seem to stop. Slamming his nose into the floor hadn’t helped with that either. He knew Opher was right. He knew. But he couldn’t stop… he couldn’t give up...”

“Ori… when was the last time you slept?”

“Huh?” Slept… the concept almost seemed unfamiliar. He could definitely remember sleeping at some point in his life, but he wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d actually woken up normally, instead of just finding himself at the Soul Link. “Uhh...”

Opher rolled his eyes. “You. Voice of the Forest, or whatever you’re called. How long has he been awake?”

“Since I met him, at least. That was around midday yesterday, so at least another day, a night, and half another day.”

“No… I think it was...” Ori thought back. “The night before last, when… no, we were going through the swamp that night, weren’t we? So… does getting knocked out by an ancestral tree count? If it does, then the day before yesterday. If it doesn’t… three mornings ago, but Ku woke me up really early then...” As he pieced the last few days back together, it hit him. “Three days… she’s been missing for three days...”

Opher spoke to Voice with a reproachful glare. “And you’ve done  _ nothing _ about this?”

“I barely stopped him from flinging himself into the Dead Waterway to avoid waiting for Grom to move things to high ground. Though this would explain his lack of regard for his own safety.”

Opher gave a scoff of disgust and turned back to Ori. He reached  out and poked his face before he could react. “Ah, and your nose is as dry as the Windswept Wastes, and Snesh told me he was worried about you starving yourself. Listen: there are four things every living creature needs to survive. Food, water, air, and sleep. From the sound of it you’ve been ignoring three of them.”

“No… four,” Ori said. He smiled at Opher’s confused look. “With my luck when I set the waters free they’ll probably thank me by drowning me.”

Opher wasn’t amused. “You can worry about that  _ after _ you get some sleep, and a drink. I wouldn’t advise testing if any of the fungi here are safe to eat, but there’s clean water in some of these aqueducts. I was just settling down for the night myself when your screams woke me.”

“Oh...” Ori’s pulse quickened at just the mention of clean water. “But… I have to...”

“You have to take care of yourself or you won’t have the strength to take care of others,” Opher said gently. “A tree with no leaves bears no fruit.” He laid a hand on Ori’s shoulder. Ori’s first instinct was to push it away, but the touch made him feel a little safer.

“By the way, just out of curiosity… I’ve never heard of any power like yours, spirit or otherwise. How did you learn this?”

“I didn’t learn it,” Ori answered as he clambered wearily up the scaffolding to the channel of icy cold, but clean water. “I don’t think you can. It was… given to me. The first time I died.”

“The first time?...” Opher repeated sympathetically. “How many has it been now?”

“I don’t know...” Ori wasn’t sure enough of his balance to scoop up water with his hands. He just leaned forward on all fours and lapped at it. It tasted a bit like the water in the streams in the Valley of the Winds. It was so cold the cold somehow had its own flavor, and he had to pause when the chill worked its way up into his forehead. “It’s been twenty-seven since I came here, but I… wasn’t counting before. I think it was probably a couple hundred.”

“Hundreds… and you remember everything?”

“Not everything. Like this time, I said some things I guess I didn’t remember. But I know you were there, and… it’s not always this bad.” Ori took another few gulps of water. “I don’t know what happens after, if that’s what you’re asking. Just the fear and the pain.” The tears came again. He wiped them away, remembering Voice’s comment a while back. He was crying over nothing again. It didn’t matter. They were all in the past. They might as well have just been bad dreams. But he felt a comforting hand on his back. Opher wasn’t like Naru. He was grumpier, more sarcastic and violent. And Voice wasn’t Sein. But they still… still cared about him. And as guilty as Ori felt for not telling them… for making them go through the pain that had almost torn him apart, even if was only briefly… he was so glad he wasn’t alone this time.

“Oh, you poor child… you poor, poor child...” said Opher. “This explains so much...”

* * *

  
  


“Ori, behind you!”

Ori turned, and ducked just in time as a fist closed where his head had just been. He rolled away out of reach of another swinging arm. His attacker made a grab for him, but he was already activating the new power he’d just learned. A tendril of deep blue light shot from his fingertips and anchored itself to the grabgrass-covered face of a long-stilled pulley overhead. It yanked him into the air as hard as the sudden updrafts in Sorrow Pass. Last time he’d tried this he just banged his head on the ceiling he was trying to pull himself up to, but now he was getting the hang of making the tether go slack early enough that he could twist around and land on all fours.

“What _is_ that?” He stared at the creature below him. It stared back up with three rheumy, unblinking eyes. “Is that… like Grom?”

“It’s a Gorlek, yes,” Voice said stonily. “He warned us about this. They’ve been… changed.”

He hadn’t expected to find an Ancestral Tree in here, but if he thought about it, it made sense. He hadn’t been the first Spirit to try to climb the Ginso Tree either. Only… this spirit hadn’t been the first, either. The ones  _ he’d _ found had. He’d come looking for them, but Ori could feel that he hadn’t meant them harm, like… like some of the others. He’d been worried, afraid. He’d heard their voices from the level above him. Ori could never make out words in the blur of the memories, but he was sure they’d been crying for help. But when he found them… they were shriveled, lifeless husks, strung up in the pulsating filaments Ori kept seeing around this place. He’d almost begged the tree to let him go, to end the memory there. He didn’t want this power. Not if it meant seeing what happened next.

Ori had never seen his kind dead before. In the memories he’d seen and felt them die, but not what happened after. Sein told him his body turned into little motes of light every time, so that was somehow what he was expecting. Not this. Not empty shells without even the faintest wisp of Light. Not fur matted with some sticky blue-black substance that wasn’t blood. Not… they’d been torn apart. Eyes torn out, skin peeled away from their jaws, spines jammed through their torsos in too many places and at too many angles to be the result of a careless fall.

Something had done this  _ deliberately _ , and left them there like they were  _ meant _ to be found. And the worst part was, Ori didn’t even know what  _ it _ was. He’d guessed that the spirit whose memories he was sharing had been its next victim, but he never got a good look at it. There was just a horrible rotting-vegetable smell, a movement in the corner of his eye, a burst of fear, and… the memories didn’t exactly end there, but what was left was a confused, muddled mess of unrecognizable blobs of color, distorted sounds, and not knowing where his own limbs were.

The power was useful, at least. It was sort of like making the string for the Spirit Arc all by itself, except it shot out a ways and grabbed onto things, and then making it suddenly contract he could pull himself towards it. He’d wished he had something like the Moki’s ropes for a while, but they took too long to make for how fragile they were. Ori couldn’t get it to actually stick to most surfaces, though. The grabgrass, and the dark blue flowers Tuley called Moonblossoms seemed to respond to it the way Lanternflowers – what Tuley called Lightcatchers – responded to Reem’s power. The spirit of the Ancestral Tree was much better with it, and could propel himself almost effortlessly through the branches… but it just wouldn’t work that way for Ori. He couldn’t even tell what he was doing wrong with it.

This was the first time Ori had failed to learn a skill an ancestral tree had shown him. They always took practice, and there were a couple, like Dash, that he’d messed up badly with before getting used to them. And this was like that too, especially with the spinning wheels involved. He’d already thrown himself into spikes three times. But he could always summon the power, and figure out how to do the same basic things with it as in the memories. He’d tried everything – making the anchor sticky, compressing Spirit Flame into a spike or hook on the end, making it wider so it spread out and grabbed onto more of the surface… but there was something awkward and unintuitive about the fluidity of the way it moved. It just felt  _ weird _ trying to use it. And there was plenty of grabgrass and moonflowers in the old mill, and few lanternflowers. He was glad to be able to use it, even if he couldn’t use it well.

  
  


“Are you all right?” Voice asked. “It seems slow. You should be able to kill it fairly easily.”

“It’s not an _it_ ,” Ori said as he watched the corrupted Gorlek reach down and pick up a long wooden pole from the floor. “It’s… a him or a her. I...”

“I _think_ female gorleks don’t have fur on their faces, but I’m not certain,” Voice answered. “Ori… you heard what Grom said. She’s not truly a Gorlek anymore. She’s one of the Decayed now.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway. She’s slow enough to get away from, and she can’t reach me up-” Ori’s last word became a startled yelp as the corrupted gorlek snapped the pole in half in her four powerful arms, and flung the two pieces up at him like javelins, splintered end first. The first one bounced off the wheel. The second one almost knocked Ori out of the air. He reflected it and sent it spinning back, but it landed with the flat end and didn’t seem to do anything to his sturdy attacker. “Okay, maybe she _can_ reach me, but…” He winced. “Voice, I can’t! Let’s just find a way to avoid her.” The patch of grabgrass was only on the underside of the pulley. He couldn’t just climb to the top. He let go, and for a moment let himself fall, then air-jumped to one side and used the tether again. With it pulling him at an angle he sailed past it, rising high enough to dash onto the top. “There!” he panted. “She can’t reach me _now._ ”

“That doesn’t help you too much. Where are you planning to go from here?”

“I’ll think of something.” Ori scanned the area above him. The tendrils had covered the beam the pulley hung from, but the one on the other end of the belt seemed clear, and it was geared to a long vertical shaft that led up to a partially-collapsed walkway. “Up there. I just have to get across here...”

Then, somewhere below him, a mechanism creaked. The pulley lurched to life, knocking Ori off his feet. He clung for dear life to the slippery, age-smoothed wood as it became steeper and steeper, and it spun faster and faster. The grabgrass came around. He hooked a paw through it, but narrowly avoided getting his tail crushed between the groove and the rope driving it. “What happened? I didn’t touch anything!”

“The gorlek threw that switch!”

“She _what?_ ” Ori’s eyes widened in shock. The four-armed creature lumbered back towards him, still with that glazed look in her eyes, but… Corruptions were stupid enough that half the time they’d walk under falling block traps, or into poisoned water, trying to attack him. He’d seen one push a lever into a new position by accident once or twice, but… the gorlek had to have _known_ how the switch worked, and that starting the wheels moving could bring Ori down into her reach.

This creature wasn’t quite like the other Corruptions, but Ori couldn’t feel the same calm, dark strength from her that he could from Grom. If there was any spark of intelligence left behind those eyes, it was like Howl’s. Ori grew more and more convinced of that after he let go of the wheel. He was hoping to drive her off, hurt her only if he had to, but even that wasn’t enough. She at least seemed to  _ notice _ the blows, seemed to feel the pain, but she had no fear of it. Even with the air filled with the stench of burnt hair, even with arms cut to the bone and a couple of fingers severed, she still lurched after him with the same single-minded determination. He could have run. He tried. But once he got far enough away, she turned her attention to the wheels he’d set in motion, ripping up a plank from the floor and shoving it into the spokes of a gear. She wasn’t like the others, and that was why she was too dangerous to avoid.

But Ori still couldn’t get his mind away from the memories the trees had shown him, of spirit fighting spirit. He struck halfheartedly, only trying to block and defend himself. A cut landed flat, and a fist closed around his blade. He panicked and held on as hard as he could, but it was still ripped out of his hands, and he was flung against the wall in the process. She lunged again, driving him into a corner. The only escape was up, up the wall and over her head. But then, he saw the opening, and his mind turned from escape. He reached out past her, through her, to the floor below, and pulled himself towards it as hard as he could.

Just like the first time he’d tried it, two nights ago in the swamp, Ori used it the technique in a moment of panic. Just like the first time he’d tried it, it connected with a sickening crunch. But this time, it didn’t hurt. He landed on all fours, his head spinning and his limbs shaking. He stumbled away, leaving a couple of bloody hoofprints. The gorlek crumpled to the ground, smoke curling from her head in a dozen places where the burst of light had ripped through the skin. Two eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling. The third had been pushed through its socket, and burst like a ripe berry thrown in a fire.

  
  


“Well… I guess all that practice the other night paid off, didn’t it?” Voice said. She was too calm, like she was trying to pretend nothing had even happened, that Ori hadn’t just killed someone… or something that used to be someone, or… he didn’t even know anymore. “You should tell Opher when we catch up to him. I’m sure he’ll be impressed.”

“I don’t _want_ him to be impressed...” Ori mumbled. “He shouldn’t...” he probably would be, though. “Don’t tell him. Please, don’t tell him.”

“Ori...” Voice sounded sympathetic. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. You did what needed to be done. I really don’t think there was anything left of that Gorlek’s mind. And if there was… a swift death is a mercy compared to living on in that state.”

* * *

  
  


“It’s quite a fascinating structure,” Lupo said excitedly. “Before the decay, the Wellspring was the heart of a thriving community. Stopping the river from flooding and keeping it supplied with clean water in times of drought is only the half of it. I estimate there are at least twenty-five separate systems of water wheels, gears, and pulleys. This millstone I’m using as a table was probably used for grinding grains and tubers, but Grom tells me water power could have also been used to weave and spin cloth, to make paper, to crush ore – and even to generate air currents to fan the flames of a forge with no bellows!”

“Great.” Ori stifled a yawn. “They’re great at making noise and keeping me up all night too.” Even as tired as he was, he’d slept fitfully with the constant grinding and rattling. More than once he was jolted awake by a nightmare. When Voice woke him for real the sun was high in the sky, and he was still groggy and exhausted. But at least he’d slept a little. It was better than nothing.

Lupo didn’t seem to have heard him. “But I could never figure out what the main wheel was for. The machinery it turned was either never completed, or was destroyed since the Decay. And it’s just so enormous it’s hard to even wrap my head around the size of it. What could they possibly have needed something this large for? It’s a complete mystery!”

“I thought you weren’t interested in the past?” Ori said it out of curiosity. At least he thought he had. But some of his impatience and irritation must have come through, because the cartographer stiffened.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I mean – I mean what you said about Tokk and… dusty old ruins, and outdated maps only being good for kindling. Isn’t this place the same?”

“Oh. Oh, yes, I suppose I said something like that. But I think you misunderstood me,” said Lupo. “I don’t think there’s no value in learning about the past. Quite the opposite: knowledge of the past can be a valuable tool to help understand the present, and the future. But knowledge is just that: a tool. You can’t live your life daydreaming about how things used to be, and lose sight of what’s ahead of you, or it’ll cause real trouble – like when Tokk sent you into that nightmare of a swamp.”

“He said he was sorry...”

“I know. I’m not bringing it up out of spite, just to illustrate my point. Let me put it this way: I’m sure this place was quite a sight when it was first built, and I want to understand why it was built the way it was, because… well, it’s important to know things like if there’s a danger of the dam collapsing, and the machinery here might give Grom some ideas even if I can’t do much with it. But I’m not going to pretend that stairway over there’s still in one piece, or that these gears couldn’t suddenly spring to life or break free at any moment. A good map can include historical information, but it should always be practical above all else.”

Ori was quiet for a while. He gazed out the window at the snow-covered mountains to the north. He was a little wary of getting too close to the ledge. He sort of understood what Lupo meant. He’d often wondered what it would have been like to see Nibel before the blindness. To meet his siblings. The glimpses of memory were so frustratingly sparse. But they must have understood the same thing. The Ancestral Trees didn’t speak to him. They didn’t show him who they were, how they’d lived. The trees weren’t stories of the past. They gave him the knowledge, the tools, he needed to survive. He couldn’t help yearning for the missing connections, and grieving for their losses. But back home, he hadn’t asked Sein too many questions about them, because he knew it would only have been painful.

Was he wasting his time thinking so much about what had happened to Niwen’s spirits? The fights, the deaths, were all so far in the past, and all he really wanted was to find Ku, go home, and never set foot in this land again. He didn’t even know any of their names. But he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that there  _ was _ a story in those little fragments of memory, and that it  _ was _ important. Nibel’s fallen had all warned him of a real danger, even if it was often one Ori had already found out about himself the hard way by the time he reached their Ancestral Trees. The very first one… Fil had perished by Kuro’s talons. And here, in Niwen, something much worse had happened. The fighting… spirits hunted by their own kind… and whatever had happened here, in the Wellspring itself. Something malicious, something  _ evil, _ had been in this place. But he didn’t want to find out what it was. The sooner he freed the waters and got out of here, the better.

“Speaking of practical, uhh… where are the wheels that raise the floodgates?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here, finally, is the rest of the moment you've been waiting for! Oh, Ori. “Self-care” is really, really not a concept he grasps very well. But he does deserve at least some credit for trying.
> 
> “A tree with no leaves bears no fruit” was my attempt to come up with a version of “Put your own oxygen mask on first” / "Don't set yourself on fire to keep others warm" that made sense in this setting, but you know what? I’m using that one from now on!


	20. A Foul Presence

The very top. Of course they were at the very top, Ori thought as he tiptoed along the beam. A gust of wind made it creak ominously, and threatened to tug  him off balance. He guessed it made sense; the great floodgates were at the top of the dam, so the wheels that opened them had to be close by. But it would have been nice not to have to climb the whole thing. Parts of the ancient structure were so choked with debris climbing it on the inside was impossible, and he had to scale the crumbling stone walls and rotted wooden beams and scaffolds on the exterior of the Wellspring. That was where he’d found Tokk.

“That old death trap’s no place for a bird like me,” the old bird grumbled. “Those caves were disappointing enough, and all the wheels have got my insides all turned about. I was looking for my old compass that I dropped the last time through here, but I think it must’ve ended up bouncing somewhere behind that door. Waste of my time even coming here: even the view’s worse than I remember!”

Tokk’s mood improved somewhat when Ori said he’d keep an eye out, and even more when, to both of their surprise, he actually found the compass. It was a strange little device with an iron needle that always pointed one end north and the other south. “Nothing like it for getting your bearings on a cloudy night,” Tokk said. “Except staying put and going to sleep, that is. If you and those moki’d had a little patience and waited ‘til morning you’d have saved yourselves a lot of trouble, and me hearing a few complaints from Lupo.”

* * *

  
  


“I don’t understand it!” Ori carefully gripped the thin thread between two fingers and tugged at it. The floodgates lifted, and water rushed through, wetting the face of the dam and joining the river below. If only the real thing was that easy. He let the gates fall again with a ‘click.’

The miniature model of the Wellspring that sat in the center of the great library was beautiful. It didn’t have all the internal wheels, but it had the tower, the dam, and the edges of part of the lake and valley, carved in exquisite detail from blocks of stone, and wooden water wheels and sluice gates that actually worked. There were even fake trees made from twigs and little bits of moss that had been dipped in something like amber to preserve them. Naru would have loved it, Ori thought. Gumo too, for all the intricate little moving parts. Ori was just happy to have something solid – and liquid – to help him see how it all worked. There were drawings of some sort in the library, just like Grom said, but Ori couldn’t make any sense of them. They weren’t anything like the drawings he made. They were… a little like maps, showing things in a weird, abstract way.

“Understand what?” Opher wandered over, a water-stained scroll half-unfurled in his hands.

“There’s water flowing over all of these wheels, but only some of them are turning -” He stopped one with a finger to demonstrate, but not for long. The water flowing through the model was icy cold. He had to lean precariously over the river to even reach it. It must not have been meant for creatures as small as him – or everything was just too big. Even shrunken down so much that trees were represented by tiny bits of moss, the lake was large enough that if he jumped in his ears probably wouldn’t break the surface. “And, well… the gates aren’t open, and there’s no more water in the river than there was before!”

“Hmm...” Opher scratched his chin. “Well, if a wheel’s moving but the gate isn’t, there’s probably not much that can be done. Something’s probably broken.” He twanged the strings running to the floodgates with his fingers. “If nothing moves at all, that’s a better sign. Something’s likely stuck, as you just demonstrated. Although, are you sure there’s enough water? A little trickle wouldn’t get something that large moving.”

“There ought to be enough! It’s like… like any of the other wheels in this place!”

“Well, then… are the ropes taut?”

“I don’t know,” Ori said. Before Opher could said anything, he added defensively: “I _did_ look out the window at them! They look like they’re sagging a lot, but the ropes are the size of tree trunks! They might be so heavy it’s pulling them down.”

“Possible. Grom would know better than me. If any case, if the ropes are taut then I’d imagine the floodgates themselves are stuck, or the water’s too weak to lift them, but if they’re slack and the wheels aren’t turning, then they must be stuck somewhere between the wheel and the… what is this thing called, a spool? Whatever it is the rope winds around. Anyway, there’s probably some sort of gears hidden in this tower right above us. I’d check on those first if I were you.” Opher unfurled his scroll again, and headed back towards the shelf he’d been browsing. “If you need me, I’ll be browsing these books. I’ve uncovered some very interesting techniques – it’s hard to tell for sure from these drawings, but it looks like this one’s hardening the Spirit Flame into a spinning wheel – fitting that I’d find it here, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Okay, gears, and...” Ori glanced at Lupo’s map, and swallowed hard. “If that doesn’t work I guess I’ll see if there’s any way of unsticking the floodgates...” He wasn’t looking forward to that. If one of those opened up while he was caught in the channel…

“Good luck.” Opher waved. Then he jumped to his feet and hurried to catch up with Ori. “And be careful,” he warned in a hushed tone. “There’s something else here, a foul presence nearby. Can you smell it?”

Ori sniffed the air. “Ugh… unfortunately.” Then he recognized the stench, and immediately tensed. He’d almost grown numb to it because it was there, faintly, everywhere within the Wellspring, and always associated with those tendrils that gummed up the wheels. But now that it was closer and stronger, he realized that he  _ knew _ that smell. It was the same scent from the memories of the spirit who’d died here.

  
  


He intentionally left the Soul Link at the Spirit Well near the library, out of harm’s way. He knew whatever was waiting for him was going to be bad. Whatever had killed those spirits… had mutilated them… it could think. He crept through the door with his mouth dry, afraid to even look into the darkness. He was half-expecting to find the remains of others of his own kind strung up to lure him into the trap.

But there was nothing. Only gears, a few of the pulsating, bulbous growths ensnaring some of them, and the foul, rotting stench. Ori thought he saw something slither away into the darkness, but it was just out of the corner of his eye. It must have been the motion of the wheels that were turning freely. Opher was right: some of the ropes had snapped. Some of the floodgates would never open: he just had to hope the ones he could open would be enough.

The gears shuddered to life. They lurched, creaked, and groaned. They started to slowly turn – the ones close to the water wheels faster, the ones connected to the giant spools hardly moving at all. But then, one by one… they stopped, and then went backwards a little.

“ _What?_ ” Ori ground his teeth in frustration. He whacked some of the spokes with Spirit Smash a couple times – as gently as he could with the weapon – to try to and unstick them again, but they didn’t budge. “What’s wrong with these stupid things _now?_ They were _just_ moving!”

“Perhaps the gates are too heavy for them to lift after all?” Voice suggested.

“I don’t think so, it’s… like they’re not trying.” He could actually knock some of the gears around a bit, rattling them enough to make the teeth knock against each other, which he didn’t think would have worked if they were straining against an immense weight.”

“Could the water have dried up?”

“How could it dry up?” Ori snapped. “There’s an entire lake on the other side! And that can’t have gone down because the _floodgates._ A _ren’t. Open!”_

But he went back to check anyway. Maybe there was something blocking the water, he thought. A dead tree or a tangle of branches or hopefully not a bunch of spinebushes and thorns that had gotten pulled into the channel. Or maybe the sluicegates had fallen back down under their own weight.

He hesitated by the door. Soul Link, or no Soul Link? He hadn’t actually gotten himself killed trying to unstick a set of wheels yet, but there’d been close calls where he had to poke the Spirit Edge up inside a closed channel to dislodge a tangle of thorns which were shot at him by the water pressure when he succeeded, or when he had to stand on top of a gear which moved the opposite way he’d expected. This ledge was on the roof of the Wellspring, under open sky. A stiff breeze tugged at his fur, and the air smelled of snow and clean water. It was as safe as the library. It was fine.

  
  


After a brief moment out in the open, returning to the chamber with the waterwheels plunged him into darkness. It was darker than he remembered. Hadn’t there been windows there before?

“Voice, can you -” Ori was about to ask if she could see any better than he could, since she didn’t have eyes. Then he saw something _big_ in the gloom moving in a way that was decidedly not mechanical, his gasp of surprise brought a nauseating wave of the all too familiar rotting vegetable smell to his nose, and she spoke into his mind.

“Run!”

Ori flung himself back at the door with Dash, but it slammed shut behind him. He turned to face the darkness again, and started to summon the Spirit Edge, but before he could finish forming the blade the thing struck. His hands were pinned to his sides. The air was forced from his lungs. Something – a root? A tentacle? Had wrapped itself around him, and was squeezing so tightly Ori thought he might as well have been caught in the Wellspring’s gears. He kicked and headbutted it, and – even in his panic he couldn’t make himself bite the slimy flesh, or wood, or whatever it was. Spirit flame! He had to use Spirit Flame! This was exactly why he’d asked Opher to teach him a better way of using it. But the orb kept fizzling and winking out of existence. When he finally summoned it, brilliant blue tongues left afterimages in his vision as they raked across the arm, pockmarking it and making it sizzle and smoke. His eyes  _ burned.  _ But it hadn’t done any real damage, just made the thing angry. It lifted him into the air, still squeezing tighter and tighter. There was a sickening crack, and pain – so much pain – but screaming or crying out was impossible.

“Voice… help!” Ori choked out. The monster’s form – or lack of one – was clear now. It was a writhing, roiling mass of growths, the same dark tendrils that ran all throughout the Wellspring. He couldn’t see any eyes, but Voice didn’t have eyes either. He knew it could see him. How long had it been watching? How long had it been waiting? It was a Corruption. There was no way it could be anything else, and he couldn’t feel any life, any emotion, any intelligence coming from it, but there was something there. Something that could have snapped his neck already, but it was just… crushing… slowly… he couldn’t breathe! His vision faded again, but through the pain he felt odd tingling, burning pinpricks across his back. And his senses… went wrong. Splotches of colors, disjointed sounds, heat and cold, tastes and smells… voices. Naru’s. Sein’s. Ku’s. All laughing at him. Kuro’s scream. Opher shouting… but that one was somehow different. Realer… it didn’t matter, he was going to die anyway.

There was a flash of blue across the darkness that sliced through the tentacle holding him. Ori felt himself falling. He crashed to the floor, gasping for air and still disoriented, but something grabbed his wrist and dragged him away. Breathe… so much pain… Had to get free… He formed the Spirit Flame orb again and lashed out.

“Ori, _stop!”_ Voice’s shout somehow left his ears ringing even though she only spoke mentally. He froze. He couldn’t take a full breath or stand up straight – ribs had to be broken, who knew what else? - but his vision had come back.

“Opher?”

“I called to him!” Voice explained.

Opher had jumped back, out of range. His eyes were narrowed, and his teeth gritted in concentration. “First rule of battle: Attack your enemies, not your allies -” he hissed without looking at Ori. He let his Spirit Edge dissolve, but drew his arm back, and something that looked like a lightning bolt frozen in the moment of the flash formed in his grasp. A spear. A spear made of light. It didn’t surprise him that it was possible, but it was  _ strong.  _ The Weapon Master hurled the weapon over Ori’s head. He turned just in time to see it impale a tentacle that was reaching out for him, but fall short of a pair of enormous toothy jaws that had somehow opened in the middle of the writhing mass of Decay. There was a brilliant explosion of Light, and a gurgling roar of fury. “Second rule of battle, know when to retreat from a stronger foe!” he said much more quickly, and beckoned Ori to follow.

Ori stumbled after him. “What – what was that?” he panted. He needed to stop a moment… catch his breath long enough to heal this, or it wouldn’t be able to run. He risked it, but almost waited too long. The stone wall behind him exploded, and he barely got away in time.

“It’s called the Spirit Spike!”

“No, the – the monster!”

“Well, it’s certainly a foul presence!” Opher replied, fanning his nose with his free hand. He had several scroll cases strapped to his back. “Don’t know why that fellow bothered fighting us, just being in the same building’s enough to knock you out. Now on we go! Hurry up!” He vaulted over the railing and disappeared from sight.

Ori hesitated, than leaped after him. He was always nervous about heights when he didn’t know what was below, but he swallowed his fear. “I have to go back! It stopped the wheels, I have to -”

“Oh, then what are those?” Opher clung to the wall nearby. He jabbed his tail in the direction of the dam. “He must have lost his grip lunging for us! Now that we’ve got its attention, I think we’d better descend in a hurry!”

The great ropes were swaying. Moving. Tightening. Ori could barely see the colossal gates lift, it was so slow, but he saw the water. A waterfall – an entire river, surging from the top of the dam. He breathed a sigh of relief. He’d done it. He’d actually done it. Only three of the eight gates were lifting, but that was enough. And the water  _ wasn’t _ on his heels this time. Some of it was turning the Great Wheel, which was coming to life, although the sun and moon probably turned faster in the sky. The rest roared down an enormous stone-lined channel with a shallower slope than the rest of the dam. It swept away everything in its path. Trees, grass, thorns and spinebushes…

And then, disaster struck. One of the ropes snapped, and one of the floodgates slammed shut like a thunderclap. But it must have hit the bottom so hard something else broke, because it lurched forward, tipping and tumbling down the slope. A wall of water was close behind it. It was nothing like the Ginso Tree, nothing like even the waves on the ocean. It was like nothing Ori had seen before in his life, except the fury of Mount Horu.

“Jump!” Opher shouted.

“Huh?” Ori saw the end of the rope just in time. He’d been so focused on the floodgate he hadn’t seen it. The broken end whipped back like a broken sapling, and smashed into the side of the tower with devastating force, snapping support beams the size of mature tree trunks like twigs. The ancient structure groaned in agony, and shifted. But it held… until the remains of the broken floodgate toppled off the side of the immense sluice, and smashed both itself and the remaining supports to splinters.

Opher let out a string of what Ori assumed were curses. “Run, Spirit! That flame won’t save you!”

Ori saw him jump, but he lost sight of him in the chaos. The only place to land anywhere near him was the top of the Great Water Wheel, and he only reached it with Reem’s power, launching himself off one piece of falling debris after another, and then grabbing onto a patch of blue moss with the power he’d just learned. He landed hard and tumbled off into a descending bucket. The wheel was moving faster now, so fast that spray was everywhere and it felt like he was still falling. Where was Opher? Was there even anywhere he couldn’t have gotten to? There was nothing, just falling stone and wood. Ori was sure Opher was dead, and he was about to be too, because the weapon master’s last words were right. He didn’t  _ know _ what happened if the ground the Soul Link was on collapsed, but if it didn’t vanish completely it was either carried with the falling rocks or left suspended in midair, and either way there was nothing below but a churning maelstrom of foaming, muddy water, and the bucket was plummeting straight towards it as the Great Wheel spun faster and faster.

He abandoned it, leaping up to the next bucket above him. Not fast enough! Not fast enough! The grabgrass! He had to pull himself further in, closer to the hub! The force almost ripped his arm out of his socket. Once more time – just a little further! He clung to a beam for dear life and held his breath as it plunged into swirling, freezing spray. He didn’t think he’d actually gone in the water – he’d just made it high enough – but there was so much splashing and spray that he was practically underwater, and it almost ripped him off of the wheel. Then he was rising again, coughing and choking. He glanced back up at the top of the dam. Two of the floodgates were gone now, and the third, although closed after the tower supporting the ropes collapsed, was wedged lopsided in its channel and a torrent of frigid lakewater was still surging past it. It was so cold… so cold… Ori was shivering so hard he could barely let go of the beam when the time came. He sprinted along it as it reached horizontal, then jumped to land on the shaft. Safe… for the moment. But the entire base of the mill was underwater, and the wheel groaned and shuddered. Was the whole thing going to collapse?

Something fell past him, bouncing off the wheel and tearing a bucket away. The mass of tentacles. It plunged into the whirlpool and vanished.

“Ori, I’m not sure the Wellspring will stay standing much longer! We have to get to solid ground!”

“How?” Ori screamed. He was shaking so badly he could barely hold onto the support beams. “There’s nothing but water!”

“There’s things floating! Trees!”

“Are you crazy? They aren’t floating, they’re being thrown!” Like leaves in a storm. If he fell into that… this was so much more powerful than the flood in the Ginso Tree, but the memory washed over his mind. Caught in the swirling water, slammed against walls and spines, caught between floating logs and crushed…

But he didn’t have a choice. If he stayed here, he was as good as dead. He jumped back onto a spoke and slid down it. He had to time this right…

“Ori -”

“Don’t distract me!” Ori shouted, and almost missed the moment. He flung himself out over the abyss, wishing desperately that he still had Kuro’s feather. He just had to fall, and… jump! That stopped his fall – now, dash to the tree trunk that looked safest! He landed, clung to a branch, and was immediately dunked in the freezing water again as it rolled over in the current. He surfaced, floundering for anything solid. Just a branch, but… a timber from the broken gates!

But nothing was a refuge for long. Ori was constantly moving, constantly jumping from tree to tree to avoid being pulled under or caught and crushed. The eddy was pulling him back towards the dam too, but it was too covered in vegetation to risk climbing. He had to race against the current, making sure each jump carried him forward… forward… finally, he made it into the downstream current, but there was still no rest, no escape.

“Make for the side of the canyon!”

“I’m _trying!”_ Ori grabbed for a vine, but he was being swept downstream too fast. He had to jump for it. He reached the bank, and tried to scramble up it, but it was already being undermined, and as he tried to climb up it collapsed under him, plunging him back into the freezing torrent again. It spun him and rolled him over and over. Sharp rocks or spines scraped against him. He fought blindly for the surface, just following Voice’s faint light and hoping she knew where _she_ was going. He had to surface between a tangle of branches and thorns, and scramble for safety even as he tried to cough up the water he’d swallowed.

It was too fast. Too violent. He couldn’t catch his breath, even for a second. He barely knew which way he was going anymore: all he could think of was staying alive each moment. But it looked like the end wasn’t far off. The river stopped up in the distance, vanishing into…

Wait. Rivers didn’t do that. Not unless they went off a cliff. A waterfall. Or at least a large set of rapids. His legs were turning to pulp, he couldn’t try to keep his balance through that. He had to get to the bank  _ now. _ He flung himself toward the edge of the stream with renewed strength… but not renewed coordination. His foot slipped into the gap between two logs just as they bounced off each other. An explosion of pain shot up his leg, and the next thing he knew he was in the water, fighting for the surface as his lungs burned worse and worse. He grabbed onto a branch and hauled himself partway out of the water again, but he didn’t have the strength to do anything but sit there, breathing.

Then the surface dropped out from under him. He plummeted through a tempest of cold spray, and plunged into icy water. He tried to surface again, but there was a sudden, splitting pain in the back of his head. He gasped, choked on water, and the cold and wet and darkness consumed him. Maybe, he thought in his last moment of consciousness, for the last time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The little mini Wellspring in the library is so cute! And physical scale models like that are commonly used in designing dams and other structures that control the flow of water, so it kind of makes sense that the Wellspring would have one.
> 
> Oh my god, the stuff after the library took me for fucking EVER to figure out! “Just write the normal escape sequence, IHC!” “No, there’s no reason for the water to be coming from between those wheels, it doesn’t make engineering seeeeeeeeeeense!”
> 
> So, yeah, I gave up on trying to make the canon escape sequence, going through the structure with all the water wheels in the way, work. On the other hand… well, what I got instead came out pretty intense in my head, so hopefully it did on the page too. And the Angry Mop is SCARY now!
> 
> Quick note: my headcanon is that Spirit Flame can only harm living creatures if they intend to harm the user. Opher wasn’t hurt by Ori lashing out at him while still semi-hallucinating – lucky Ori tried using that power instead of Spirit Edge!
> 
> Spike makes its first appearance, and Spirit Star, uhh, gets mentioned at least.


	21. The Waters Cleansed

For the second time in a few days, Ori woke up surrounded by a small group of worried-looking moki. But awake was a relative term. The glare of the sun dazzled him, and his ears were so full of water that he could barely make out their voices. He tried to stand, but wobbled, fell over, and coughed up an alarming amount of lake water.

“See? I told you he would wake up!” said one of the moki.

“You didn’t say that, the Voice of the Forest did!”

“I said it too, just… after she did!”

Ori got to his feet, more carefully this time. His leg hurt so much he almost collapsed again. It confused him at first, then as the memories came back he was confused that he could stand on it at all. He’d been sure it was broken. “What… happened?” He mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

“You made the waters flow once more!” said a female moki he thought he might have seen before. “They were muddy at first, but now they are bright and clean!”

“Swift and clear!” added another.

“And very cold!” said a third.

“Then Tokk said you fell – or jumped. But the waters must have brought you back here!”

“...Oh.” This was sort of familiar ground. He was pretty sure Lupo’s maps still called it the Wellspring Glades, but it was the farthest upstream part. The river was almost unrecognizable. It was much higher than before, and the water flowed fast, and clear, as the moki said. But the bank was muddy, and tree branches and thorns were scattered everywhere well above where the water reached now. The flood must have washed him up here. And somehow, he hadn’t drowned. At least not completely. “Yeah. I wasn’t expecting there to be this much water, though.” He glanced upstream. It was hard to see through the trees from here, but it at least looked like the Wellspring was still standing. “And then I sort of fell, kind of jumped.”

“Sort of?”

Before Ori could answer, Voice explained how the tower had been swept out from under him, and he’d landed on the Great Wheel and then had to jump off of that. The moki all gasped, their eyes widening.

“I could never do that! That is such a long fall, even on purpose! You are very brave!”

“So brave!”

“So soggy!” said a young moki with a mischievous grin.

_ That  _ voice he recognized.“Mokk!” Ori threw a pebble at him – but not hard, and too small a pebble to hurt. Then he did a double take. “Wait… Mokk?” Despite the pain in his leg, Ori almost jumped in the air in excitement. He could hardly believe it. “You’re alive!”

“Of course I am alive! A warrior like me -” Mokk puffed out his chest a little. Two of the other moki rolled their eyes and shook their heads. His face fell, and he deflated back into a posture that was almost slouching. Ori noticed that Mokk was also dripping wet, and he was wounded – not badly, but with several small but painful-looking cuts and scrapes. “Yes, I am alive,” he said, a little more subdued. “Why are you surprised?”

Ori explained what he’d seen at the Howling Groves tribe’s village.

Mokk fidgeted a bit. “Yes. The Decayed all attacked us, the night after you fought Howl. I think it must have been all the Decayed in Niwen. We tried to fight them, and I wanted to fight them more, but there were too many. We had to run away. It… it is still brave to -”

“Know when to retreat from a stronger foe?” Ori quoted. Opher… he couldn’t be dead… he couldn’t be.

“Yes.” Mokk nodded. “But it does not feel very brave at all, especially when you are told to leave when others are still fighting. But we did all make it out!” he said with a forced-looking smile. “Almost all of us.”

  
  


Mokk stayed close to Ori as he limped back towards the inhabited part of the Glades. One of the other moki said his leg had been badly broken, but she’d found a couple of life shards and given them to Ori while he was unconscious, and they must have healed it just enough to put weight on. He had enough energy to use the regeneration ability after making sure the Soul Link was no longer underwater or floating in midair, and that helped a bit too, but he needed the help of a Spirit Well. The other moki went on ahead, talking excitedly about how Kwolok had to be told.

“So… did you have to fish me out of the river?” Ori tried to change the subject to something besides death. He didn’t want to think about it right now, and it didn’t sound like Mokk wanted to talk about it either. “Or were you just enjoying the clean water?” He didn’t ask about the wounds. He thought it was fairly obvious where they’d come from.

But Mokk almost looked  _ more _ uncomfortable at the question. “Well… that is sort of a long story.”  He sighed and shook his head. “ I thought about what you said. And I decided I would not show the Howl Fang to others so they would not think I was a liar. I mean… many moki already doubt Mokk the Brave, but… never mind. So I decided I would just show it to myself, to… to remind myself that I am brave. It is easy to forget sometimes. Especially now.”

“To remind yourself...” Ori repeated. “So… kind of like a good luck charm?”

“Sort of. But not quite. It does not bring luck, but it brings bravery… maybe. It is not so easy to feel brave when your home is gone and so are friends and family, and you are in a new and scary place that you have to share with strange moki.”

“Strange moki? Do you mean Eema and Tann and Snesh?”

“They must be, because I do not know them. Are they from Owl Meadow Tribe, or are they from the other families and pieces of tribes that live in the north and east?”

“Uhh… Owl Meadow.”

“Oh. Anyway… I was alone, or I thought I was, and I took the Howl Fang out to look at. But other moki saw me. They laughed at me, and asked what I had it for, and I said it was a trophy… which was a mistake. They said I was a liar and a coward, and I could never kill Howl or chase him away or even hurt him.”

“Were they wrong?” Voice said in Ori’s mind. “One moki couldn’t possibly-”

“Be _quiet!_ ” Ori hissed.

“Huh?” Moki looked like he’d been struck. “You asked, I thought you wanted to hear -”

“No! No! I want to – I wasn’t talking to you!” Ori said hurriedly. “There was, uhh… a fly!”

Mokk looked suspicious. “A fly?”

“Yeah. It flew right in my ear.” He flicked them and shook his head.

“Oh. Yes, the buzzing is so loud when they do that, isn’t it?” Mokk said with a shudder. “One time a fly bit me on the ear when I was sleeping, and I dreamed a Skeeto had put its nose right through my head and out the other side.”

“Are you sure it was a dream? Maybe it just flew off before you woke up!” Ori joked.

“I thought the same thing. Actually, my brother told me. And he had me try to find the hole by sticking a piece of straw in my ear… I was a pup then, I wouldn’t fall for that trick now.”

“So… what happened next? With the other moki.”

“They tried to take it away from me. I fought bravely, but...” Mokk’s ears fell. He rubbed a scab on one. “Being brave does not always mean winning. They took it anyway, and threw it in the river. But I showed them! I waited until they were gone, and then I bravely jumped in the river to look for it! Which was… maybe not a good idea. The current is strong now, and the water is much chillier than it looks. It almost swept me away. But I -” He looked around nervously, like he was afraid he was being watched. “I did get it back, eventually! And this time I hid it away, somewhere where they will never find it!”

“But – but – why would they do that? That’s horrible! You weren’t hurting anybody by having it! Even if you _did_ say you’d fought him -” It would have been such an outlandish lie that there was no risk of anyone believing it, Ori thought. No, all he’d had was a stick and he’d somehow knocked a fang out of Howl’s mouth. Maybe it was plausible enough to take seriously. But _attacking_ someone over it? “Who was it?” he asked, his claws digging into his palms.

Mokk shrugged. “Nobody you know, I don’t think. Well… you might have met some of them, when...” He abruptly stopped and stood up on all fours. “Do not say anything,” he said seriously. “It would be very bad for my reputation.”

“Huh? Why?”

Mokk looked at him like he’d asked why trying to swallow a pine cone whole was a bad idea. “A warrior fights his own fights – or her fights.”

“What, you mean you’re not allowed to ask for help? If someone – or something – just attacks you?”

“What? No! I mean, sometimes, but… yes, you are supposed to help each other with Decayed, or if there is a fight between tribes, but not in the same tribe. And never join in a duel unless it is to stop somebody breaking the rules – and it is especially bad if you are fighting or arguing with someone in your tribe and somebody who is not interferes!”

“I’m… not sure I understand. Spirits don’t really have tribes, and… well, I didn’t _think_ about what I’d do if one spirit tried to kill another… until I came here.”

“Oh. Well… look, how will making them think I need you to fight my battles for me help make them think I am brave?”

“I...” Ori winced. He’d almost acted like a complete idiot again, but this time he’d almost embarrassed Mokk instead of himself. “Yeah, I guess I see what you mean.”

  
  


The village at the heart of the Glades was just as unrecognizable as the river. Before, it had just been a few buildings. Now, it was an actual village, or at least was well on its way to becoming one. Moki were gathering branches and leaves, spinning grass and bark fiber into ropes, hoisting lashed-together platforms up into the trees, and gathering food and water.

But there was tension in the air. It seemed like three different groups of moki had moved into the glades at the same time. Right now Mokk’s tribe, who had struggled in the night before, was the largest, but at least half a dozen of the moki from Kwolok’s Hollow had moved in as well… and then there was Owl Meadow Tribe, currently still with only three representatives. And when Ori saw them, they were in the midst of a heated argument with two grey-furred moki. Tails were bushed out, teeth were bared, and paws rested uneasily on stone blades.

“Listen,” Eema snarled. “We have just as much claim to this land as you do! No – more of a claim since our expedition and Lupo’s charted the route here!”

“That is meaningless since we never relied on your charts, or your help in any other way,” one of the two, a tall male with half an ear missing and a necklace of several large fangs and claws, said. He spoke with a similar accent to Mokk’s, rarely contracting his words. His tone was slow and patient, but obviously strained. “We traveled here by our own choice, by our own means, and the Glades have been unclaimed by any tribe since their abandonment, so outside of the current residents’ claims, we have every right to -”

“Yes, you arrived a full day _after_ we did,” said Snesh. He, like Eema, was almost at the throats of the Howling Grove moki, but Tann was hanging back, looking uncomfortable.

“The rest of your tribe is not here.” The other strange moki, a female, said with narrowed eyes.

“We’re here representing them,” said Eema.

“Yes, you are here and that is all. We are the ones helping clear thorns away, building ladders and bridges -”

“Only because you have your whole tribe here. When ours arrives you won’t be able to get your way with just numbers,” Eema hissed.

The scarred moki responded with a deep growl. “Because we have not chosen to join with  _ invaders _ and killers!” he spat with a pointed look at Tann. Tann flinched and stared at the ground. “It is not surprising that your tribe is well on your way to doing the same. Know that if you try to drive us from our homes with force, we will not yield as easily as you did, and when you come crawling to us begging us for aid we will not forget as easily either.”

For a moment, Ori thought Eema was about to attack the old moki, and they must have thought so too, because suddenly there were others gathering behind him. Snesh almost had to hold her back.

“I’ve already told you, _Darl,_ it’s not anybody’s home yet! If you want to resolve this peacefully, you can either show me and Snesh a fair agreement now, or you can wait one _lightforsaken_ day and talk it over with our elders, but don’t think you can claim every tree and rock in the Glades and expect that to be recognized!” She whirled around and limped away, fuming. Then she saw Ori, and her demeanor… not exactly changed, because she was still clearly furious, but it was like she was trying to put on a cheerful face for his benefit. “Oh – hello, Ori! I hope your morning’s been better than ours has!”

“...What was that all about?” Ori asked. He fidgeted, trying to find a comfortable position to prop his hurt leg on the stones of the Spirit Well. Eema lay sprawled across the edge on the other side, and Tann was slumped dejectedly with his head in his hands. Ori had never seen him like that. Snesh had curled up in a patch of sunlight, and was muttering something under his breath.

“Ugh… arguments over territory,” Eema groaned. “So just the same as any other time meeting with Howling Groves tribe. I know they’re in as bad a spot as us, but them showing up last night wasn’t a pleasant surprise. They could have at least _tried_ to be reasonable for once!”

“No, I understand that, I mean… _why?_ There’s not _that_ many moki in their tribe, or yours, so it’s not like you’ll run out of trees to build houses in, will you? And with the river flowing again there’s plenty of clean water too.”

Snesh looked up. “It’s not that simple. Wood for building, wood for fires, good stone for tools, fruit trees, fish and shellfish in the rivers, herbs for curing wounds and sickness...”

“What he said, and they’re trying to claim all the best spots,” said Eema. “You’re right, the Glades can support both our tribes, but only if we don’t treat each other like enemies.”

“For instance, if they were to build houses in every tree around this Spirit Well so that anyone from our tribe would have to request safe passage to get to it. Which wouldn’t surprise me at all with their attitude.”

“Oh, I’m sure they would have if they could, but Grom’s made it clear that the glades are a haven for all, not just one tribe. If they went _that_ far that’d be the end of him helping them rebuild their village. But beyond that, well, he can’t exactly tell anyone where to put their houses.”

“Oh.” Ori was quite for a bit, trying to work up the courage to ask the question he’d hoped they’d answer, so he wouldn’t have to say it out loud. “Uhh… what I wanted to ask was… Tann? Why were they talking about you being an… invader or something? Was there a… a fight between your tribe and theirs? I don’t understand why you… you said your old tribe doesn’t exist anymore? What happened to it?”

Tann sighed deeply. He started to stand up on his hind legs, then changed his mind and slumped down again. “That’s right, I guess since you’re from far away you wouldn’t know. It’s -”

“First of all, it’s none of _Darl’s_ business,” Eema said testily. “His tribe weren’t even involved, he’s just using it to insult us.”

“It’s a long story,” said Tann. “The Silent Woods hasn’t always been, well… I suppose you’ll see it soon enough.”

“It wasn’t always called that either,” added Snesh.

“Right. And for a long time, as long as any moki can remember, Niwen’s been slowly dying. Every year more land turns barren, and what’s left can feed fewer mouths. There used to be… I don’t even know how many moki tribes, but more than the four that have survived – five if you count what’s left of Threepines.”

“Five?” Ori folded one ear in confusion. He counted on his fingers. “There’s you, there’s the Blackgrass Lake Tribe, there’s Howling Groves, and Threepines – who else?”

“There’s the Saltwhiskers down where the marsh meets the sea,” Snesh answered. “Their territory doesn’t border ours, so we don’t see too much of them, but I’ve got a couple uncles who were born to them.”

“Anyway,” said Eema, “One by one, most of the old tribes’ homelands have turned to wasteland as the Decay spread from the North and East. Eventually they had to find new places to live, or die.” She turned the feather-shaped token around her neck over in her good paw. “The places both our tribes were named for, where we once lived, are just memories now – if even that. I remember my Great Grandfather telling me about watching the owls come from far, far beyond Niwen to build their nests when I was a pup. But he was a pup himself when the tribe left it behind, and now he’s gone. If any of the elders were born then, they were too young to remember anything.”

“Threepines I’ve seen,” said Tann. “But… yeah, the trees were dead when I was born. I think one of them’s fallen by now. Anyway, there usually wasn’t anywhere to flee _to_ that wasn’t already occupied by another tribe. Sometimes they joined together, but sometimes the land couldn’t support both their numbers, and… well, starving moki will do just about anything to feed themselves and their families.” He shuddered, and hunched over.

Eema nodded solemnly. There was so much pain in her eyes. In both of their eyes. “Many years ago, after the land they’d fled to before succumbed, Threepines Tribe attacked us, and drove us out of the home we’d known for a generation. They pushed us West, into the Marsh, and into parts of the land the Blackgrass Lake tribe occupied. It wasn’t all at once, though – I think it was about a year of fighting, of raiding parties back and forth, of being afraid when your mother or father went to search for food or water they wouldn’t come back.”

“And sometimes they didn’t,” Snesh said bitterly.

Tann winced. “Neither did some of ours. Half the pups in both tribes grew up orphaned or half-orphaned… and all for a miserable patch of land that was turning barren itself by the time they  got it .” His eyes shimmered, and his gaze fell to the ground. Eema looked up, and crawled over next to him. She pressed her forehead against his shoulder and wrapped her good arm around him.

Ori was horrified, but he was riveted by the story. He gripped the stone blocks of the Spirit Well so hard he thought they would bruise, and he almost felt sick to his stomach. “Then what happened?”

“Well, there probably would have been another war, but this time Kwolok intervened,” said Eema.

Tann let out a brief hiss. “Kwolok intervened after the swamp and Shriek were through with us, more like.”

“Oh… yeah, _her_.”

“There would have been a war, but before we could attack, we were attacked first. Shriek drove us deep into the swamp, and the swamp nearly consumed us all – warriors, elders, nursing mothers, pups… the thorns and the poison and the Decayed don’t make any distinction. We reached their village, but to surrender and beg for refuge, not to fight.”

“He says like he wasn’t one of the two idiots who knocked each other down down a hill and into a patch of Deathglue vines,” Snesh snickered.

Tann groaned. “Ori, before he tells any lies, she’s the one who tried to kill  _ me. _ ”

Eema glared needles at both of them. “You showed up on our land in the middle of the night, with a weapon, shouting something at me. I assumed… anyway, it was your fault we slipped.”

“What, was I supposed to just stand there and let you stab me?”

Snesh grinned. “As you can see, we cut them out, but not  _ apart. _ ”

“Shut _up_!” Eema snapped. But she couldn’t keep a straight face.

“Anyway,” said Tann, “The tribe was split into three. Some of us joined with Owl Meadow tribe. Some stayed under Kwolok’s protection. And some… some chose to stay in the Silent Woods. Every year since then more of them have fled from it, but this year I think the path got so dangerous anyone still there’s been trapped. But thanks to you, I think before long we’ll all be united again.”

“Umm… Spirit! You are going to Silent Woods, yes?”

“Huh? Uhh, yeah… _eventually_ ,” Ori said with an irritated sigh. He glanced up at the sun and scowled. How was it not setting yet? He’d wanted to set off to look for Ku immediately, but Voice had warned him that it would take a while, maybe even a whole day, for the pure water to make its way downstream to Kwolok’s Hollow and the side channel that led to the Silent Woods. Grom later repeated that. Ori was trying his best not to get impatient like he had before. And it helped a bit that he wasn’t really waiting for some _one_. He knew nothing could make a river flow faster short of adding more water to it, and he couldn’t imagine any more water flowing through one place at once.

He was sort of waiting for someone, though. Tokk had returned with the good news. Opher and Lupo were safe, but the floodwaters had kept them from leaving the Wellspring for a while, and it didn’t sound like they wanted to risk riding a raft down the swollen river. Ori was hoping they’d be back before sunset, though. He trusted Tokk, but he still wanted to see with his own eyes that they were still alive. Once the sun set, he’d have to leave if he wanted to reach Kwolok’s pond before it got dark. His plan was to spend the night there so he could begin his search first thing in the morning. For now, though, if he was stuck waiting around somewhere this was a better place.

“Oh.” The moki was full-grown, but he had a shy, timid demeanor. Ori thought he might have seen him among the moki living in Kwolok’s Hollow, but he didn’t think they’d spoken. “When you do go east, could you tell my family I have found a new home?” He patted the wall of the half-finished hut. It was mostly a skeleton of wooden poles lashed into a dome shape, with leaf thatching coming partway up the walls. “I came here from where Kwolok lives to find these glades. Kwolok is kind, but his waters are dark and there are too many biting flies. But here it is paradise for moki.”

“Why didn’t they just come with you? Kwolok’s hollow isn’t that far.”

The moki shook his head. “They live in Silent Woods. We chose to stay behind after the...”

“All the fighting?”

“Yes. But it is not safe there anymore. Not much food left, and...” He looked up nervously. “Dark wings. But we did not know if we would be welcome anymore, and none of the families who left ever returned, so I went alone to ask for Kwolok’s help, last Winter. But storms and Decay closed the path I took, and I couldn’t find my way home again.”

“You haven’t seen them in almost a year?” Ori couldn’t keep the shock out of his voice. Just thinking about not seeing Naru, or Ku, or Gumo, for so long made his chest tighten. It had only been a few days, and he was _mostly_ worried about Ku, but the nightmares about Naru had come back. He’d tried to get some sleep earlier, while he waited for the Spirit Well to finish healing his hurt leg, and he’d dreamed that he and Ku finally made it home, only to find Swallow’s Nest barren and lifeless, and the cave dark and empty.

The moki’s eyes widened. “Yes… I suppose it has been that long. I’ve missed them so much! But I think they will like it here. Grom has helped me build a good hut, and a good hut makes a good home. Not when it is empty, though.”

“Or when the roof is missing,” said Voice. 

“Yeah…” Ori sighed. “I’ll tell them, if I see them. But how will I find them?”

“You will? Oh, thank you so much! I will pay you for your help! If you find the Spirit Well, our hut is close to that – to the North and West, past the Kii’s garden, and then it is in the trees on the slope downhill.”

“I… think I can remember that,” Ori said. The directions didn’t make any sense, but he guessed he’d understand when he got there.

The moki had become so excited and animated he was almost bouncing in the air. “Thank you again! O, celebration! I cannot wait to see my pup again! Oh – I don’t think I told you yet - my name is Yeret! My mate is Ardi, and my pup is Iomi! Ahh… I bet she has grown since I saw her last.”

“Oh. Yeah… you do that, don’t you?” Ori looked uncertainly over his shoulder. “How long do moki take to grow up?” he whispered. It occurred to him that no one had ever said exactly.

“At least ten years – some who were young when the moki found me are still not grown yet,” Voice replied. “Probably less than forty?”

“Oh! There is one more thing!” Yeret dashed into the half-built hut and rummaged in a wicker bag. He produced a small, rectangular piece of wood. A small box, with a cord around it as a latch. Inside was a piece of smooth-polished bark, stained by two pawprints in red dye. One end was rough and jagged, though, like it had been broken off there. “You should take this with you. Ardi has the other half – that way she will know you are telling the truth!”

“Why would I lie about that?”

“I don’t know. I – I am not saying you would. There are just… legends. Old stories about – about Spirits.” Yeret’s nervous demeanor had returned.

A chill ran down Ori’s spine. “Did spirits do something…  _bad_ in the past?”

“...no?” Yeret said uncertainly. “At least, I don’t think so. Our mothers and fathers always said if you ever see a spirit, to not listen to them, or follow them, because if you follow them back to the land of the dead, you will be lost and never return…”

“ _What?”_ Ori wasn’t even offended, just confused, and curious. Land of the dead?

“But you are alive, right? Uhh… right?” Yeret tilted his head from side to said. Ori felt uncomfortable, like the moki was trying to look _through_ him. Then he shrugged. “The mate-token did not fall, so you must be. Besides, you came to Kwolok leading other moki, so I know you are safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lotta stuff happening in this chapter. Mokk the Brave is finally back, we’ve got more moki politics and finally the explanation of what happened to Threepines Tribe… and of course, THAT side quest finally appears! Yeah… if you’re familiar with the game, you know what’s coming.
> 
> I don’t see what moki need keys for their houses for, though. When you live in a sticks-and-thatch hut and the main threats corruptions are either corruptions, things like Shriek, or another tribe of moki attacking you, what’s the point of a lock?


	22. Ash and Bone

“What was _that_ all about?” Ori asked Voice once they were out of earshot.

“Moki can be superstitious creatures, Ori,” she explained. “I’ve heard rumors that some of them have seen the ghosts of spirits racing each other through the forest.”

“Ghosts?” Ori tilted his head to the side. “Do you mean, like… fragments of memory, like the ancestral trees, or… do you think they were chasing each other?”

Voice hesitated before answering, and she had an almost nervous flicker. “I don’t think it’s likely that they saw spirits at all, alive or dead. There are wisps of light that sometimes appear over swampy or boggy areas – and some corruptions glow a similar color to a spirit as well. If a moki mistook either one for a spirit and tried to get close to it, they could stumble right into a bog and drown.”

“But…”

“And if they really _are_ seeing the images of departed spirits… well, a careless moki who tried to follow _you_ could easily end up in the land of the dead, so to speak. And you’re real. An image with no physical presence could appear in deadly areas. I don’t think the moki are saying there’s anything malicious about them – or you.”

“Oh.”

“If you’re that curious, you can always ask Kwolok when we reach the hollow,” Voice said. “But remember to try to get some sleep tonight. You’ll need all your wits about you for what’s to come.”

* * *

“Wake up, little one.”

Kwolok’s voice was so deep it made the ground under Ori vibrate a little. He was on his feet in an instant, looking around for some unknown danger. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, not looking where he was going, and his foot went into something wet and very cold.

“Ahh! What -” Ori shot high into the air. He landed with his fur bushed out and tail twitching. “Oh. The water’s a lot higher than it was last night.”

“Indeed.” The enormous frog smiled approvingly. “That is why I woke you. I thought you might want to move somewhere higher up.”

“Oh.” Ori yawned and stretched. He’d slept a lot better – and a lot longer – on the mossy bank than he had in the Wellspring. The moki there had offered places in their homes, but he felt safer close to Kwolok’s strong, steady light. He gingerly extended his hoof and tapped the surface again. He withdrew it sharply and braced himself for the burning sensation, but it never came. “Is it safe now?”

“I believe it is. True to your word, you have taught the waters to flow once more. The stench that hung over the Wellspring is gone. Our Marsh is in your debt.”

“Ugh… the stench...” Ori wrinkled his nose at the memory of the smell, then shivered at the memory of its source. “Umm… there was something I wanted to ask you.” He described the thing that had been blocking the water to open the floodgates. The thing that had nearly killed him and Opher.

Kwolok’s expression didn’t change much, just a slight widening of his eyes, but alarm rippled through his aura. “You say it was…  _ hunting spirits _ in the past?”

“And in the present. I think it was watching me… it tried to stop me from opening the floodgates like it _knew_ , and I… I think it used them as bait, just like it used the bodies of those spirits.”

“That is concerning,” Kwolok said. “There have been Servants of Decay with minds of their own in the past, but I have not heard of such a being. I would not dwell on the matter, though. The Dead Waterway lies open, and with it your way East.”

  
  


Ori felt a little lightheaded as he approached the grey-brown water. It was still dark and murky, but it smelled like a river was supposed to smell. Kwolok had advised him that it was still best to avoid drinking it – not that he’d planned to try – but it was clean enough to swim in. His heart pounded with nervous anticipation. This was it. He’d find her… one way or another.

He turned to the little orb of light. “I guess this is goodbye, then, right?” 

“What do you mean?” Voice asked.

“Thank you for all your help with the Wellspring, but… aren’t you staying with Kwolok, now that it’s fixed?” He wasn’t looking forward to being alone again. Hopefully he wouldn’t be, not for too long. Hopefully.

“No. Ori, when Kwolok gave you to me… that wasn’t just to restore the Wellspring. We’re...” she hesitated. “Connected now. And I can’t explain why, but I feel like there’s some… some sort of purpose that I can’t quite grasp. I don’t think the bond can be broken until there’s no longer a reason for it. So for now… I’m with you as long as you need me.”

Kwolok nodded. He’d followed them to the edge of the long channel. “And I would never let you face the dangers ahead alone, little one.”

“It’s okay,” Ori said. “I know it’s dangerous, but… I’ll be fine, trust me.”

“Yes, the Voice of the Forest has told me about your power. Even so… you must be careful. The Silent Woods are home to the one the Moki call Shriek. Her heart is stone, her cry is pain. But do not mistake her for some mindless beast… and do not underestimate the dangers of the Woods.”

“I understand,” said Ori. “I saw her flying over the marsh. That’s as close as I want to get. I’ll stay away from her. And… I know the Soul Link has weaknesses. I’ll be careful.”

“Then farewell, and good luck. I pray you will return safely.” Kwolok slowly slid back into his home waters. “And I pray you find your friend… before she does.”

  
  


The Dead Waterway was dark and chilly. The channel narrowed, and lead through a tunnel of spikes and overhanging vines. Kwolok’s pond was soon out of sight, and Ori knew it was too narrow for the frog to follow. He and Voice were on their own. The water turned from brown to gray, and it made his eyes and nose sting. He paddled along the surface whenever he could, but occasionally there were dense nests of mortar worms, or fallen trees so low over the surface he had to duck under spine-covered branches.

Ori hated not knowing exactly which way was up, and where the surface was. He hated when weeds he couldn’t even see appeared from the murk right in front of his face, or even worse brushed against his legs. And there were other dangers in the water, too. Decayfish snapped at his heels, and snapjaw vines lunged from the gloom or spat balls of false-light that glided through the water like it was nothing. And he couldn’t keep the Spirit Edge together, or even form the orb to use Spirit Flame like Opher had taught him, in the water. All he could do was swim away, and occasionally send projectiles back the way they’d come. It had been a long time since he’d had to swim this far, and when he finally got out of the water he felt like he’d been traveling all day, and muscles were burning that he’d forgotten about.

But it wasn’t long before he found himself missing that part of the journey.

The woods were indeed silent. He’d noticed it a while after leaving Kwolok’s Hollow behind. Even in the places hit hardest by decay, there were still some trees and plants clinging to li f e, and the buzzing of insects, and some small creatures like birds and lizards. But here, nothing grew. Ori had never been in a place like this before. The Forlorn Ruins had been this lifeless, he supposed, but the conifers of the valley were still there, covered by snow. It was more like the parts of the forest that had been burned by Mount Horu. Some of the trees had fallen, but many more still stood, just skeletal trunks with all the leaves gone. Icicles of stone hung from the branches. The morning sun was blotted out by a blanket of featureless clouds, and a thin fog blurred objects in the distance into featureless gray haze. The ground underfoot was all fine ash and dead grass coated with crystals and weighed down by them until it formed a single rock-like mass. The smell was like nothing he’d ever experienced. It wasn’t the smell of death,  or even  the smell of  D ecay as he knew it. It was something beyond decay, like there was nothing left to rot anymore.

The only other living creature Ori had seen so far was Shriek. He’d barely even recognized her on the ground. The hulking, towering shape in the mist didn’t look like anything that could fly, or… like anything  he’d ever seen , really. It was hard to see clearly, but she almost looked like a gumon with the way she walked, if  g umo n were as tall as some trees. But the hostility the thing radiated was the same  as before . It made Ori want to curl into a ball and cry. It made him want to just  _ stop. _ Stop moving. Stop thinking. Stop breathing. She hadn’t seen him, but she’d come fairly close, by accident. He’d hidden inside a hollow tree trunk, but he’d caught a glimpse of blazing white eyes, and a small body held aloft by stilt-like legs the size of tree trunks, with dangling clawed hands between them.

But Shriek was the only  _ living _ creature Ori had seen so far. There weren’t many dead ones  either , but he’d found a few. Most seemed to be Corruptions, but he’d found other kinds of creatures too. They were all… not exactly rotted away, not exactly frozen, just… shriveled. The eyes were gone, and usually most of the flesh, but bones and skin and fur or feathers remained, and everything was covered in the stone. There was no smell to them, no remaining Light or Darkness. Just petrified carcasses, lifeless yet many of them hadn’t even fallen. Birds were still perched on branches, other creatures still sat or stood. Most disturbing of all, there were a couple of moki among them. One was huddled against a tree stump with something clutched in its hands, and what looked like it might have been fear on the tiny bits of skin that clung to its skull. But next to it lay the remains of a bunch of flowers, and someone had driven a stake with a name carved into it into the muddy ground.

“The body was probably already rooted to the ground by stone when it was found,” Voice explained in a near-whisper. Even though she only spoke in his mind, it seemed even she was reluctant to disturb the silence. “Moving it would have meant chiseling it free, and I suppose the legs and tail could have broken off – Ori, are you okay?”

“I’m fine… I’m fine...” Ori tore his eyes from the statue and swallowed hard. “Just… glad I didn’t eat anything before leaving the hollow. That’s all.”

  
  


Nothing had attacked Ori since he’d set foot in the Silent Woods. It was almost – no, there was no almost, it  _ was _ disconcerting. The place was so dreadful that not even corruptions could survive it. It had already claimed his life twice, too. There were small puddles of real water here and there, but the ponds and streams had turned into a ghastly, bubbling pale gray ooze. It was as if bone had become liquid. Ori hadn’t been dumb enough to try to swim in it. Not on purpose. He’d just chosen the wrong footing, and a branch had broken under him. He couldn’t make it to shore, and there was just… just a searing pain. Not even the poisoned water had been like this – only the boiling hot water, and the lava at Mount Horu. He couldn’t feel the heat rising from this, but the fumes in the air around it made him dizzy. They also apparently exploded when he struck the larger bubbles that formed on the surface with Reem’s power. It was fortunate in a way, because there were no lanternflowers, and only a few sickly moonflowers, to help him. But it was dangerous trying to cross that way. A bubble had burst sooner than he’d expected and plunged him into the lethal slime again.

Five nights. Five whole nights had passed since Ku had fallen in this horrible, horrible place. Ori was trying to hold onto the last shreds of hope as they withered away in his grasp. He didn’t want to think about the possibility that she was dead. He didn’t want to believe it. But Ori could never truly make himself believe that someone  _ couldn’t _ be dead. They could. They always could.

Would he ever even  _ find _ her? If she’d fallen from the sky into one of the bubbling lakes… she’d be lost forever. He’d never even know… and even if she hadn’t, how could she have survived five days in a place like this? He couldn’t believe anyone or anything could live here.

So when Ori heard the hoarse, gravelly voice, he almost jumped out of his skin. He’d found the Spirit Well, and he thought he was probably headed in the direction of Yeret’s house. But that voice didn’t sound like any moki.

“You! Light-Bearer! Your kind is not welcome here, in my garden!” The creature who hobbled towards Ori was like a dark reflection of Opher. He had a similar body shape, but wore nothing but a mask that seemed to be made of the same gray stone that covered everything here. He was skin and bones under unkempt, shaggy black fur, and he leaned on the staff he carried for support. But shadows surrounded him, a hateful darkness that set Ori’s fur on end.

“Huh? I’m sorry, I didn’t know this was yours – I’ll leave, I was just looking for -” Ori stammered. “Wait – _garden?”_ He looked around. “How is this a garden? Everything’s _dead!_ ”

“Exactly!” the mask-wearer croaked. “When the trees needed you most, you, yes _you_ were gone!” His eyes were narrowed to furious slits under the mask. He jabbed the staff at Ori’s chest. “And now my garden is all but dead, see? Cold stone, bitter dust.”

Ori backed away, keeping out of range of the stick. “No – I didn’t – I didn’t leave! I’m… I didn’t mean to come here! If I’m not welcome, I’ll go!”

“Go? Yes, leave this dying place, as your kind did before! Turn your back on us again! You can lie all you like, but the Kii remembers!”

“The Kii?” Ori repeated. “Yeret said his home was past your garden from the Spirit Well. Do you know where?...” But the Kii was already stalking off. “...it is?” He sighed, and turned away himself. “Forget it, I’ll find it on my own.”

“Ori, are you sure you want to stray from looking for the one you truly seek?” Voice asked.

“I promised I’d tell them,” Ori said. “And I… I can’t just leave them in a place like this either. Besides, maybe they saw where Ku fell, too. Or they have a map of this place, or something.” The Kii hadn’t been friendly or helpful, but just the fact that he was _there_ had given Ori renewed hope. _Someone_ in these woods was still alive. And if he could survive here, maybe Ku could too.

  
  


But Ori’s heart sank as he drew closer to the dilapidated ruins of a small cluster of moki homes. They were different from the Howling Grove tribe’s village. It looked more like most of them have been damaged by the elements, and  they had obviously been abandoned for a long time.

“The one in the trees on the hillside, right?” Ori looked at the dwelling with a growing feeling of anxiety gnawing at the pit of his stomach. It was in better condition than most of the others, but there was a hole in the roof, and no light or smoke came from inside. He hopped to the little platform outside the door, knocked, and waited. There was no reply. Ori’s mouth felt dry as he rematerialized the mate-token Yeret had given him. They’d probably already abandoned it, he thought. He hoped they’d found somewhere else safe, but if they’d never made it to Kwolok’s Hollow… he hoped their bodies weren’t among the ones he’d seen in the woods – some fairly close to the village. He was afraid that they were.

But Ori wasn’t prepared for what he saw when he tugged the unlatched door open and tiptoed into the dimly lit hut. Nothing could have prepared him, even if it was a sight he’d seen before… in more ways than one.

“No -” Ori gasped, his voice rising to a horrified squeak. The mate-token clattered to the floor.

There were two moki. One an adult, and one a pup, smaller than Ori, almost as small as Ku had been when she first hatched. The grown one stood facing the door in what seemed like a protective posture, like she was waiting for some threat to come bursting through. But her head was turned away, turned towards her child. The little one’s ears were flattened in fear and her tail tucked under. She was half hiding behind her mother, with her forehead pressed against her shoulder exactly the way Ori had seen other young moki do. They both stood motionless, exactly where they’d died.

Ori’s legs turned to jelly. The hut seemed to sway underfoot. His hands flew to his face. His fingers felt like ice, but they were warmed by breath that rushed in and out far too fast. It was too familiar… it was too familiar. Sunfruit, the last sunfruit, rolled across a stone floor. The floor of a cave that wasn’t empty, but it was lifeless. Naru’s embrace, far too limp and far too cold. The memories crowded into his mind, clawing at each other like corruptions.

“Oh no...” Voice was more resigned. She didn’t sound all that surprised. More like she’d seen it a hundred times before. But the sorrow still washed over Ori like muted drizzle. “These moki stayed too long in the decay. What a waste… if they’d only gotten out while they still could...”

“Don’t. Talk about them that way.” Ori took one unsteady step away from the door, then another. Further into the hut. His eyes darted about the room. “Where is it… where is it...” He felt queasy, and an enormous force like the tentacle of the monster in the Wellspring crushed his chest. And the memories still tore into him. He was himself, lost in confusion and disbelief, trying desperately to wake Naru. But at the same time, he felt the blast of hot rage when Kuro returned to her nest on that horrible night.

“Talk about them what way? Ori, I wasn’t saying this was their fault, or Yeret’s, I just – what are you looking for?”

“The other half. Of the… of the thing. I should give it… give it back.” Ori didn’t find the other half. He didn’t look particularly hard, and it was probably buried under something or tucked behind something. But when he checked the sleeping platform, and he found the little sackcloth doll, he couldn’t look anymore. The tears started then, too many to blink away. He panted, trying not to keep his rapid breathing from turning into sobs.

Then, through the disjointed memories, the thought that he’d been trying so hard to push away forced its way through. The image appeared in his mind of finding Ku… like that. Shriveled. Stone. Eyes rotted away. Something inside Ori sparked as he left the moki village. It caught. It burned.

And when the Kii crossed his path again, it exploded.

He’d tried to avoid him, taking a longer path around what he thought must have been the masked creature’s garden. But not far enough, apparently. “Oh, back again so soon, Light-Bearer? Have you seen the fate of the land you abandoned? Or have you come back to mock me once more?”

“Shut up.” Ori didn’t look at him. He could barely even get the words out, barely even see through the haze of tears. An ember of rage was burning a hole in the pit of his stomach. He kept walking, with his fists clenched at his sides and his antennae and tail held rigid.

“Ah, you are too good to even look at old Kii now, are you?” Kii wheezed. He lurched in front of Ori, glaring at him through the holes in his mask. He made another accusing jab with his stick. “Or can you not face me because you know you have nothing to say for -”

“SHUT UP!” Ori’s own scream almost deafened him. He formed the Spirit Edge without thinking, and lashed out faster than the strike of a frog’s tongue, slicing the Kii’s walking stick in half. “Shut up!” The lethal blade cut through the air again, not close enough to hit, but close enough to send the Kii scrambling back. It tore a deep scar into the withered ground. Another swing, just aimed at a rock because he knew it would break the blade, split it in two. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut. _Up!”_ Even without a weapon, he lunged, making the other creature retreat until his back was pressed against the twisted trunk of a tree. There was fear behind the mask, and the darkness shrank away before him, but Ori didn’t care. His own light was broken like the Element of Warmth, a white-hot inferno of rage that was burning him from the inside out. The pain was too much, too much to shield everyone else from. It erupted. It broke free. And Ori focused it on the nearest target, screaming until his throat nearly ripped itself apart.

“I never did _anything_ to you! I never did anything to your _decayed_ trees or your stupid garden! I didn’t leave you – or – or anything!” Tears streamed down Ori’s face, scalding hot as they soaked through his fur. A crackling blue halo of Spirit Flame surrounded his body. “And – and neither did any of the spirits here! You know what happened to them? You wanna know what happened? They’re _DEAD!_ They all _died_ trying to protect this stupid, rotten, worthless place! And this is how you – and this is how – and they all died scared and alone, and it didn’t even matter, and you don’t even _care!_ ”

“Ori!” Voice snapped. Her tone was angry, but there was _fear_ buried in her aura. “That’s enough! You don’t have any right to speak this way about -”

“You shut up too!” Ori rounded on her. Everything was shaking. Everything was burning. “I – _You_ don’t have any right – you’re not Sein, this isn’t Nibel, and – and – I never wanted to come here! I didn’t wanna come here, it was all just a – a stupid mistake, and I hate it! I hate it and… and… I just wanna go home! I just wanna find Ku and go home, and never see this place ever again! I lost her, and I – I was supposed to protect her, and you can blame me for that, but if you’re going to just float there and not say a word while he blames me for stuff that happened when I wasn’t even _born_ , then… then...”

He wanted to say something that would  _ hurt _ her. He wanted to tell her she could just leave, and sink in the swamp and  _ die _ and never say a word again. But he couldn’t make himself do it. He couldn’t, not when he looked into her faint, wavering light and saw all the hurt and  _ betrayal,  _ and…

“Ori, just stop… please. You’re scaring me.”

And fear. And… the Kii had scuttled away to safety once Ori turned his back – but where he’d been  _ wasn’t _ safe. Ori had seen the wisps of smoke curling from his fur. He’d been hurting him. He’d been  _ burning _ him. He’d been burning him the same way Kuro’s siblings had been burned, except not even by fear. The mirror image of the same terrible rage that had made Ori afraid to even look the Great Owl in the eye was  _ inside _ him.

As it burnt itself out, Ori’s strength drained away. His breath became nothing but hitching sobs that barely even got enough air into his lungs. His legs almost buckled under him. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’m sorry...” Without the anger, there was nothing left but the hurt, and the fear.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Ori? Where are you going?” Voice asked. She bobbed along behind him as he ran through the dead forest, back towards the Spirit Well. He was barely paying attention to where he was going, and nearly tripped and fell over… he didn’t even know what. Probably a stone tree root.

“Back to the Glades… I have to… I have to tell him!”

“Remember what Grom said about the Warp Crystal? If you go back, you might not be able to return here.”

“I know!” Ori snapped. His voice broke into a hoarse wheeze, and he fell to a fit of coughing as the spirit well’s light reached out and enveloped him. His throat felt it had before he made it up the Ginso tree. “I’m sorry, Voice – I just can’t…”

“You don’t need to apologize to me. I’m just warning you, you could lose another whole day. Are you sure you want to take that risk?”

Ori wasn’t sure. He was terrified that he’d get trapped in the Glades all day. He was terrified that Ku would be lost for another day, maybe forever. But… the keystones, the lump of ore… those were nothing compared to how hard it was to carry the little petrified doll.

  
  


He burst from the Spirit Well in the Glades, startling Eema off her perch, and hit the ground running. At first, he was dazzled by the sudden sunlight, and ran without really knowing or caring where he was going. He took refuge from the curious stares of the moki until he could calm his breathing, but he was still shaky when he made his way back down towards the hut by the stream.

The hut was finished. There were walls and a roof all around, and even an arch-shaped door. It was propped open by a rock, and Yeret sat inside, stuffing some sort of soft grass into a cloth bag. When he saw Ori, his face lit up and he sprang to his feet.

“Oh! Hello, you are back quickly! Did you find my family in the Silent Woods?”

Ori had tried to think about what he was going to say, but now the words were gone from his mind. His throat closed up, and even when he tried to speak, no sound came out. He couldn’t meet the moki’s bright eyes. He shook his head slowly, then changed it to a nod halfway.

“Did you find the Spirit Well? I can draw you a map from there! I am not as good at mapmaking as Lupo, but I can make one that will help.”

Ori shook his head again. “I’m sorry...” he could barely hear himself. He hadn’t intended to be that quiet, but his voice was just a hoarse whisper. “I found it but… but...” Tears welled up in his eyes. He rematerialized the stone doll and clutched it to his chest. It was as cold and lifeless as the woods. Ori took a deep breath, and held it out to Yeret. “I was too late.”

Yeret raised one ear and lowered the other. His mouth hung open a little. Recognition flashed in his green eyes. “This is… this is my pup’s doll. But it is stone!” Worry slowly spread across the moki’s face. He took the doll and stared at it like he was expecting it to start speaking. “But Iomi loves this! Why would she leave it, unless – they had to leave very quickly, or they meant to come back… Was there a note? A map? Anything saying where -”

“They’re dead!” Ori blurted out without thinking. Immediately he wished he really had torn his own throat out and could never say a word again. “I’m sorry… it was too late...”

“What?” Yeret almost dropped the doll from shock. He gingerly set it down inside the hut. “That can’t be… no...”

“I’m afraid it’s true.” Voice appeared over Ori’s shoulder. “We found their bodies.”

The life drained from Yeret’s face. He stood motionless for several heartbeats, staring at Ori like he was looking straight through him. “I… thank you for telling me...” he said in a hollow murmur. “I have to go home.”

“What? No – no, you can’t!” Panic flooded through Ori’s veins. He felt like he’d been stabbed with an icicle. “Don’t go back there! That place is evil! It’ll kill you! Please just – just don’t -” His pleading became more and more frantic. For a moment he thought Yeret was going to duck past him and just run, and maybe the moki had thought about it too. But instead, he suddenly ducked into the hut and slammed the door shut. Ori heard a bar fall into place with a thunk, followed by a quiet, gasping sob.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus Christ, writing this chapter gave me MASSIVE fucking Character Bleed, especially with Ori’s breakdown. I physically felt like I’d been crying and screaming my lungs out, and all I was doing was just sitting at my chair typing.
> 
> This quest is one of the most famously heartwrenching moments in the whole game, but the fact that it’s ORI discovering the mokis’ bodies makes it a hundred times worse. Coming home to find a loved one lying there, dead, is literally the exact same scenario he’s probably had nightmares about for years. Add to that how he kind of projected his own worries about Ku onto Yeret’s family, and it just mentally broke him.
> 
> Also where the hell does the Kii get off acting like it’s Ori’s fault the Silent Woods is a disaster? I mean, yeah I made his lines a bit harsher than in canon, but even the canon ones are out of line, man! Unless Kii knows something about Niwen’s spirits that Ori doesn’t? But right now Ori’s really not in a mental state to be curious about the mysterious conflict between the Spirits of the past, and… poor kid didn’t take it well. Partly because even if Ori tends to blame himself for everything, he’s also been experiencing the deaths of the Ancestral Tree spirits, and all their fear and feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. And partly because even Ori draws the line at being blamed for something that happened hundreds of miles away and a hundred years before he was even born.
> 
> And... I'm at over 70,000 words for this fic, which now means I'm over 100,000 published for the Ori and the Blind Forest fandom! Yay!


	23. Where the Owls Are No More

_ The woods lay still, all ash and bone. I had almost given up all hope that we would ever see each other again. _

  
  


“Ori! Are you all right? What happened?”

Ori froze in his tracks as the two moki sprinted towards him, eyes wide and ears flattened in alarm. He tried to wipe the tears from his face, but only succeeded in getting his forearm damp, because they were replaced almost immediately. He’d held it together until he was out of Yeret’s earshot, but only just. He tried to say something, but it took so much effort to speak right now. “No… I don’t know...”

“Ori, is your sister...” Eema was out of breath from running across the village. Her arm was out of the sling now, but she’d been limping on it and it was still swollen. “Did something happen?”

“Huh? No, I...” Ori swallowed hard, and winced at the scratchy pain in his throat. “I haven’t found her yet.”

“Then what happened?” Tann asked. “The way you came out of that spirit well, I thought… well, you were acting like someone died.”

Ori took a deep breath and explained as best he could, but he could barely even get the words out, and Voice had to fill in some of the details. Tann’s eyes widened, and his ears fell. He slowly sighed and shook his head.

“Oh. Yeret said he’d asked you to look for them. I...” he groaned, and tugged at his whiskers. Eema stood up on her hind legs and put her good arm over his shoulder with a concerned expression. “I was worried, but it didn’t occur to me to warn you until you’d already left,” Tann continued. “The Stone Decay’s always been a fact of life for me. I… guess it was a shock, wasn’t it?”

Ori nodded. “Yeah...” he sniffled. “You… grew up in that?”

“The creeping stone hadn’t reached the village yet when I left, or I wouldn’t be here telling you. But… yeah. I remember having to flee our old village, and it was always… around. There were other pups my age who went exploring and drowned in the tar pits. Others… they found their bodies but it was too dangerous to retrieve them. I didn’t see some of them until years later, when we were having to venture farther and farther to try to find patches of green where we might find food.” He shuddered, and his breath caught in his throat. “I kind of accepted that I probably wouldn’t see anyone who stayed behind in the Silent Woods again, but… it’s not easy hearing what happened either. Ardi… she was like a big sister to me. To half the pups in the village.”

Ori wasn’t sure which one of them moved first. He knew he half-stumbled, half-fell, and the next thing he knew he had his arms around Tann, and tears were staining the moki’s dark fur. “I’m sorry...” he whispered. “I’m sorry… it was too late… I was...”

“Ori, it’s okay. I’ll be… I’ll be okay.” Tann said, but reciprocated the hug. “It’s not your fault, Ori. It sounds like they probably died a long time before you came here.”

“I know… it’s just -”

“Did Yeret say something?” Eema asked. She gently pulled Ori back and sat down next to the two of them.

“What? No!” Ori said hastily. “He didn’t – he didn’t say anything bad, he’s… never mind. It’s just… someone who called himself the Kii said something about… spirits, and I was just...”

“Oh. Him?” Tann chuckled and shook his head. “I wouldn’t pay any attention to him. He’s been in that part of the woods longer than anyone can remember – right?” He looked at Eema for confirmation.

“Since before our tribe had to flee our old home, at least,” she said. “Who knows, maybe he’s old enough to remember the spirits?”

“Who knows how much of _anything_ he remembers, at his age...” Tann rolled his eyes. “He… I don’t know, our tribe traded with him for healing herbs sometimes, and they _worked_ , but I don’t think he’s all there under that strange mask. I remember him saying things like… the Decay was a punishment from nature for the sins of the past. I was always scared of him, but once, some of my friends and I dared each other to go into his garden, and...” he shivered. “He chased us off, but he chased us _deeper_ into the woods, shouting at us to go back the way we came. He said _we_ brought the Decay with us, because of… because of what we – our tribe did. We barely made it back alive. So… don’t believe whatever he said about you. I know what it’s like to be blamed for something you were too young to have any part in.” He sighed sadly, and put a paw on Ori’s shoulder. “And don’t worry too much about us. We’ve got each other. And our tribe. But Ku needs you, right?”

“Yeah.” Ori stood up and looked back towards the hill where the Spirit Well’s faint light shone from. “I should go back. Thanks for… for… finding me. I’m… I’m scared for her.”

“It’ll be all right,” Eema said. But she didn’t sound certain. “Just… don’t give up. No matter what you see. And… no matter what happens, I know she’s lucky to have someone like you for a brother. Always remember that.”

* * *

Just like Yeret had said, Ori couldn’t stay long in the world of the living. He had to return to the land of the dead. The Silent Woods.

The Spirit Well’s light was weak, but it was just enough for the warp crystal to work one last time. Ori felt guilty about leaving the moki without a source of healing. Even if Eema had practically pushed him through.

“Don’t worry about it,” she’d said. “My foreleg’s nearly healed anyway. Besides, Mother’s threatened to tie me to it, and I’m not sure if she’s joking or not. This gives me an excuse to explore the Glades… be with my family… gather my own bedding and try to stop her from putting crushed moonflower petals on it...”

He knew she was trying to make him feel better. But she was right, and so was Voice. He couldn’t spend the whole day just getting back to where he’d already been.

The Silent Woods had felt almost warm compared to the Dead Waterway, but coming from the Glades, Ori immediately noticed how cold it was, and how dark. It wasn’t freezing, but it still felt like a winter’s day. One of those gloomy days where the sun never bothered to show itself and he just wanted to stay in the warmth of the cave and sleep.

He ventured deeper and deeper into the barren wasteland. The way home was completely out of sight. Ori almost hoped he’d find Lupo here, too, because all he could rely on to know which way to go was the faint, shrouded sun. But the cartographer had laughed and shook his head at the mention of mapping the place. “I’d love to, but I’m afraid the weather there wouldn’t agree with me,” he’d said dryly. “You know. Burning rain, ash, poison fog, taloned death from above, that sort of thing. But you seem to enjoy drawing – and the additions you made to the map I gave you before weren’t bad at all, although the lines could be more precise. If you’d like, I can give you some blank paper and supplies, and you can chart the details – and the dangers - yourself.”

The scribbles Ori had made weren’t accurate by any means, but they’d sort of helped him find his bearings at least once. It didn’t look anything like the ones Lupo made, or even Nibel’s map stones, and the distances probably weren’t right, but it was a bit easier to picture. Still, to be on the safe side, he was making sure to carve markings into the dead trees with Spirit Edge every so often to lead him back to known territory.

Lupo’s maps also didn’t have any bloodstains on them. It had been an accident at first: Ori had cut his arm badly on a stone icicle and not thought about his fur still being damp after he’d stopped the bleeding, and a little got smeared on the paper. Then he had the idea of taking Lupo’s instructions literally, and marking the places where he’d died as ‘dangerous’ with a red dot. But once they dried they just faded to brown, especially in the ghostly gray light here. And it wasn’t that funny anyway.

There was one landmark Ori could go by most of the way. Two enormous straight, tall tree trunks stretched up into the cloudy haze. It was an unsettling reminder of the last thing he’d seen of home: the Ginso Tree disappearing into the ocean haze.

Night fell. It was rainy again, and there was no moon. Ori knew it was pointless to try to search in this. All he’d find was every deadly pit of mud in this horrible land. He was forced to shelter as best he could in the branches of a dead tree that provided no cover from the weather. Sleep was another matter. He tried, and he was sure he’d slept  _ some _ , but it was so cold, and he kept tossing and turning and being shaken awake by nightmares. At some point exhaustion became too strong, and by the time Voice woke him the sun was high in the sky.

Then, as he ventured to the north, and then West again, the next day, he came upon the most horrific sight of all. He almost didn’t recognize them for what they were because they were so  _ big _ , and he was used to things that large being trees. But there were few trees, not even dead ones, in this part of the woods. Instead… there were owls.

The petrified husks towered over him, as tall and imposing as Kuro. But there was no Darkness around them, no white flame of hatred in the empty eyes. There was only death. Most of them still stood, covered in petrified feathers that looked like they’d been covered in something sticky, like tree sap, that had then hardened. Many seemed to be trying to cover their bodies with their wings, like they were trying to brace themselves against a sudden gust of wind. Just the way Ku did.

The elements had been less kind to the carcasses. They were so tall they were exposed to the wind, and it had hollowed them out, withering them and stripping them to the bone. The skulls or lower jaws had fallen off of some of them. Ori could barely stand to look at the ghastly husks. But there were so many that he couldn’t look anywhere else. There were dozens. Hundreds. Maybe even more.

“Owl Meadow?” he asked. His throat was painfully dry, but he didn’t trust any of the water here.

“That is what the moki used to call this place, yes,” Voice said somberly. “I remember now… this is where they used to gather, to lay their eggs and raise their young. I… I don’t think Our light was welcome here, but… I cannot believe it has become _this._ ”

Ori was ready to leave this horrible place, this graveyard of the owls, and stay as far away from it as possible. It was too far east by now – Ku wouldn’t have fallen here, would she? And there was no way she’d ever have come here, surely. But then, as he unfurled the map on a patch of dry ground, he saw them. In the ash and dried mud, there was a trail of footprints far, far too small to belong to any of the dead. They had to have been made since… since the last rainstorm. Last night.

“Ku?” He stared at the tracks in shock. His eyes felt like they would just fall out. There was no way… no way any other bird would be walking around _here_ , not if they could fly. She was alive. She was really alive. “Ku!” he called into the silence of the graveyard. He took off following the trail, and then when he lost it just running in any direction, calling her name as frantically as he had the night of the storm. He shouted for her until his voice gave out and he couldn’t manage much more than a hoarse whisper.

Then, he heard something. Ori stood straight up, stalk-still except for the movement of his ears and antennae. He didn’t dare breath, just pray he’d hear it again.

“Ori?”

That was her. That was her! He sprinted towards the sound, bouncing and springing over rocks and tree stumps and crashing through tall, stone-encrusted dead grass. Where? Which way? He called out to her again, and this time the small, sad voice was closer.

“Ori? I’m over here!”

When she struggled through the thicket and Ori saw her face, it was like all the pain, all the anger, all the guilt and fear of the last few days melted away all at once. But the swell of emotion was still so strong it nearly drowned him. It was joy, joy so strong it wrapped all the way around back into sadness. It was like how he’d felt when… when after he’d come back to Swallow’s Nest for the first time, and even though Sein had told him what had happened part of him was still expecting to still see Naru’s lifeless body on the floor, but instead he found her, arranging sticks and leaves around Ku’s egg.

The spirit and the owlet flung themselves into each other’s embrace, and for a long time they just stood there, pressed against each other, crying. Ori didn’t want to ever let go again. When they could finally form words at all, they just ran into each other.

“Ku! I – thank the Light! Thank the Light you’re safe!”

“What happened to – where were you? I was so scared!”

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry I left you alone for so long, I was – I was trying, I was trying to find you!”

“I thought you were _dead!”_ Ku sobbed. “I thought you were dead, and – and I thought I was gonna die, and – Ori I’m sorry, I was trying to land, I just couldn’t -”

“I know! I know, Ku, I’m not blaming you for anything!” Ori kept stroking the soft feathers on her head until her fast, shallow breathing slowed. “Look, don’t worry about the storm, don’t worry about Naru, don’t worry about anything else. We’re going to get out of here, we’re going to go home, and forget any of this nightmare ever happened, okay?”

“Okay...” Ku nodded uncertainly. “After you fell – after I let you fall – what happened?”

“It’s a long story, I’ll tell you on the way. Are you hurt?”

“I… I don’t know.” Ku’s feathers were disheveled, sticking out stiffly at odd angles like she hadn’t been cleaning them properly. Underneath, she seemed thinner than Ori remembered. The dark circles around her eyes were bigger. Her legs were covered in the same gray mud and ash that made up the ground here, and the rest of her body was splotched with it. Feathers were caught in it and stuck together in a way that was a little _too_ familiar. But she was well enough to walk, at least, and her wings didn’t look broken. “I got hurt when I crashed, and...” She stretched her wings out, and winced. “It still hurts a bit, and I’ve never been this hungry or thirsty in my life!”

“You haven’t had any food or water since last morn – whichever morning it was?” Ori’s throat had healed from the few life shards he’d found in the woods, but his voice still cracked from near-panic. He’d been desperately thirsty even by the second day. How long could she… how long could she even _survive_ without water?

“No. A little. There were some other birds that… I guess they were too small and the storm just broke them. But they’ve turned to stone now. There’s been some puddles when it rains, but otherwise all the water smells really… gross…”

“Okay… okay, there’s clean water in Kwolok’s Hollow, and the moki there hopefully can spare a few fish.”

“What’s that light floating next to you?” Ku tilted her head back and forth, looking at Voice like she was an unusual flower, or perhaps an interesting grub.

“I am the Voice of the Forest, young one.”

“That’s kind of a long name...”

“I just call her Voice,” Ori said.

“Oh.” Ku looked a little disappointed. “Ori… I’m sorry I wanted to explore. It’s… it’s my fault this happened.”

“Ku, this wasn’t your fault,” Ori said firmly. “Neither of us knew about the wind or the storm, but I was supposed to keep you safe, and… I failed.”

“No! You don’t understand! I think this all happened because I…” Tears welled up in Ku’s eyes again. “I wanted to know if there were other owls like me out there, and… I didn’t even know where I was going. It was like the sky guided me here, and… I guess this… this...” She swept her good wing around the graveyard, then buried her head under it. “This is what it wanted to show me. I don’t wanna see what the world’s like anymore…”

“Ku...” Ori didn’t know how to comfort her. How was he supposed to make _this_ feel better? It was like the Ancestral Trees, like watching his own brothers and sisters die and knowing he was alone, the last spirit. “I know this is… this is really bad, but… well, I thought I was the last of my kind, but… I’m not anymore, and… this place has spirits too, or at least it used to, so maybe there’s other Spirit Trees somewhere in the world, and other spirits. So, there’s probably more owls somewhere too! Right?”

“I’m not.” Ku looked up, and shook her head with a certainty that sounded like more than wanting to believe, more than the way he’d felt certain she was alive. And there was more than sadness in her voice, there was a _fear_ that sent a chill down Ori’s spine. “I’m not the last one. There’s… there’s...”

An unearthly screech rang out across the graveyard. A bone-chilling, teeth-rattling sound that was all too familiar to Ori… and closer. Ku’s eyes widened in terror. “Oh no!” Her voice fell to a frightened whisper. She looked around frantically. “Ori, hide! We have to hide! She’ll see us!”

“I know!” Ori saw the towering silhouette out of the corner of his eye. She could probably see right over the tall grass! That wouldn’t protect them, it had to be _under_ something, or at least behind it… “Over here! Quick!” He dived towards a fallen tree trunk, looking back halfway to make sure she was still with him. They pressed themselves behind and underneath it, hooves and talons sliding in the wet ash. Voice’s light dimmed to almost nothing, but she still spoke in Ori’s mind.

“She’s looking this way… I think she heard you.”

Ori certainly heard  _ her _ . The ground vibrated under slow, heavy footfalls. Ori scarcely dared to breathe, but Ku’s chest was going in and out so fast it was like the shuddering of the Wellspring’s gears. She was shaking with fear. No… they both were.

A leg the size of a small tree trunk planted itself in the earth just a few paces in front of them. The aura of hostile darkness was everywhere now, thick in the air like a mass of cobwebs sticky with half-dried blood. Ori winced and shut his eyes, trying to fight the urge to scream, to bolt. Maybe if she saw him he could distract her, but what then? Not a sound… not a sound… They were so exposed. Nowhere to run.  _ Don’t see us… don’t see us... _

Another footstep. Then another. Ori finally sucked in an unsteady breath as the bizarre figure receded into the distance again. He saw ragged feathers trailing from the stony, stiltlike legs, and the dangling talons grasping thin air, and his mind finally pieced together  _ what _ she was. Those weren’t legs… those were wings.

“It’s _her…_ ” Ku whimpered. “She’s… she’s like me.”

“She’s an _owl?”_ Ori was still having trouble recognizing Shriek as a _bird_ , let alone as the same kind as Ku or Kuro.

“Mm-hmm. I think so. She… I don’t know how to explain it, she just… feels different. And… I saw her looking at _them_ yesterday, and it was like… like a whole ocean of sadness.” Ku looked meaningfully at the statues. “But she’s _scary_.”

“I know she is, Ku. I know.” Ori held on tight to his own wrist, trying to make his hands stop shaking.

“Ori?” Ku’s voice was small and weak, like the times when she’d woken him up in the middle of the night but was trying not to wake the others. “Is that what mom was like?”

“I… I don’t know.” He didn’t know if telling the truth was a good idea. “I think she might be worse.” If Shriek’s aura wasn’t worse than Kuro’s, then there was certainly no other creature he’d encountered that came close. Her soul was like the storm, an endless black abyss of pain and sorrow and hatred. “Let’s just… don’t worry about her, okay? We’ve got to get out of here. Come on, just… stay close!” Ori started to head back the way he’d come, but Ku shook her head. “I lost the feather. Ori I’m sorry, I tried to -”

“You didn’t lose it Ku, the storm took it. It’s… don’t worry about it. We’ll find another way to get home. I’m not sure how, but… somehow...”

“No! I caught it, but… when I crashed I lost it again. It keeps getting stuck in the trees where I can’t reach and blowing away again. But I don’t know which way it went this time! I – I’ve tried to fly, but my wings still hurt and I can’t – I can’t – we have to find it -”

“Ku! Don’t worry about the stupid feather!” Ori snapped. He immediately regretted it. Tears welled up in her eyes again. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to… Ku, I’m not mad at you. Look, I’m going to take you back to the Wellspring Glades, or – or to Kwolok! You’ll be safe there, and then I’ll come back here and find the feather! Come on!”

“I can’t! I can’t, Ori! You’re not listening, I can’t go that way because I can’t fly!”

Ori thought back to the terrain he’d just covered, and realized with horror that she was right. It was hard enough for him, climbing and jumping in midair and occasionally even grabbing onto moonflowers. But then, he had an idea.

“Okay… okay, we need to find somewhere where you can stay hidden! I’ll – I’ll run back, and – the Spirit Well isn’t that far! Grom or the Moki probably know a way to fix your wing, at least well enough to get us back to the Glades. I’ll bring whatever they make right back here, and -”

“What? No! No! Ori, don’t leave! Don’t leave!” Ku almost tackled him trying to stop him from going anywhere. She was hyperventilating worse and worse, and her aura buzzed and prickled with panic. “Don’t leave!”

“I’m not leaving. I’m not leaving. I’m – I don’t ever want to let you out of my sight again either, trust me. I’m sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking.” He glanced down at his hands, and the spirit shards tied to his wrists. “Huh… Voice, do you think owls can use these?” he asked. “If I could give you the one that makes climbing easier, maybe we could...” He trailed off. “Hang on! I think I have an idea!”

  
  


It was nearly sunset by the time Ori finished sewing the leaves to Kuro’s wing feathers. It was hard to tell how many was enough, but he was paranoid that they’d come loose again, or just fall apart, and he wanted to make sure she wouldn’t fall out of the sky if a few came loose. It had taken time to find leaves that seemed like they were fresh and sturdy enough to not just crumble to dust, it had taken  time  to find a bit of spike narrow enough to use as a needle to poke holes through them without destroying them, and lacing them into place had taken forever.

It was a clumsy job. The leaves flapped around and didn’t stay in place, and they kept having to adjust them but he couldn’t think of a better way of keeping them still. Ku could get off the ground, but only just, and she was having to work much harder with her right wing.

“Do you think you can make it up to this ledge?” Ori asked. He jumped up to a tree growing – or at least, formerly growing – from the cliff face a bit below it.

Ku walked up to the edge of the mud cautiously, tilting her head back and forth. “I… think so.” She gave her wings a couple of flaps. “To the tree, not the ledge.”

“Okay. The tree’s fine. I’ll get up here, and I’ll help pull you up -” Ori jumped, but suddenly Voice’s alarmed call rang out in his mind.

“Ori don’t jump, don’t jump!”

“Huh?” It was too late. He was already in the air, rising past the top of the ledge. The shadowy, stilted figure came into view over it. Ori’s blood turned to ice. He curled into a ball in midair, trying to will his light to go out. He landed awkwardly on the branch again, almost slipping off. Just as he pulled himself up, Ku struggled in to try to land. She just reached the end, and the brittle petrified wood snapped under both their weight. For a moment Ori thought they would both fall, but she turned around, gliding back to shore and just barely making it. The mud caught her feet and she landed in a somersault.

“Ow! Ori, are you -”

“Sshh!” Ori put a finger to his mouth, and almost lost his grip on the wall. He pointed up over the ledge.

“Huh?”

“Shriek’s up there,” Voice explained. “I don’t think she saw you, but keep quiet!”

Ori nodded. He climbed up the wall as high as he could without making himself visible, and pushed off. He realized to late that he wasn’t going to make it, not without jumping from on top of the ledge like he had before. Even with the midair jump, and the dash, he was plummeting towards the deadly tar pit. He flailed helplessly in the midair, holding his breath so he wouldn’t scream.

Then he was yanked sideways. Something sharp dug into his ankle. The wind from frenzied wingbeats buffetted his ears.

“Ku?”

Before he could fully register what had happened, they’d crash-landed. Ori breathed a sigh of relief. “Nice catch,” he said after making sure they were okay. Mostly okay. His leg was bleeding. “That was close… too close.”

“What do we do?” Ku whimpered. “She’s blocking the way back… are you sure she doesn’t know we’re here?”

“I think we’re okay, Ku. We’ll just… have to take the long way around.” The direction he hadn’t even considered trying to go at first. Ku’d said there were spikes everywhere, the smell of smoke and sulfur got stronger in the air the further east they went, and he’d seen bulbous floating shapes that had to be corruptions. “We’re going to have to move fast. Just… stay close to me. If there’s something dangerous, or something attacks us, I’ll go ahead, to see if it’s safe.” He took a deep breath, and put down the Soul Link. “Ku… this is really important. If I die, come right back to wherever this blue fire is and wait.”

Ku’s orange eyes widened in horror, and shimmered with tears. “If you  _ die? _ Ori, what -”

“I don’t – I don’t know how to explain it, but I can come back! Just… just trust me, okay? Come on, let’s go!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol welp, I think I’ve probably completely ruined the entire Kii sidequest for Ori now.
> 
> You see, Ori is finally learning from his mistakes! He warned Ku about the Soul Link this time! But there really isn’t a gentle way to explain something like that.
> 
> Note: Snesh is absent at the beginning of this chapter because Owl Meadow Tribe has finally arrived at the Glades, so he’s spending time with his immediate family / helping forage for supplies and build new homes. Eema’s stuck at the spirit well because of her injury and Tann’s there to keep her company / make sure she doesn’t do something stupid.


	24. The Silent Woods Hold Her Now

_Though the distance was vast, it could not keep the family apart. I was afraid they were lost forever, but as long as there was any hope, I would have searched to the ends of the Earth._

  
  


“Gumo… you’re _sure_ this thing will float?” Naru looked at the raft with skepticism. It had looked much bigger up above the tide line. Now that the waves were lapping at the front of it, and half the space onboard was taken up by supplies, and she was faced with it actually being the only thing separating her from the ocean, she wasn’t quite as confident.

“The model I built floated with rocks about the size of us on it.” Gumo lashed the spare oar to the mast. “Which are much heavier, although I didn’t think of the weight of supplies. And I’m _mostly_ sure it will float this way up. But I still wouldn’t both stand on the same side of it.”

“...That’s reassuring,” Naru said. But it had taken both of their knowledge, both of their skill, to build this raft. If only one of them knew how to sail it. At least, more than the absolute basics she’d picked up from conversations with seagoing creatures over the years and Gumo’s explanations of _how_ the wind pushed and pulled on a vessel. She bent down and gave the vessel a strong shove. It dragged deep furrows in the wet sand and gravel of the beach, but it slowly slid out into the water. The front end started to bob in the gentle waves.

Naru had never realized how lonely it was to watch the shore drift out of sight. Everything she knew was behind her… except for the children. And they were what was important.

They’d been lost for seven days now. Seven days and no sign of them.

Wherever they were, Naru just had to keep hoping they were safe. That they’d found shelter somewhere. And that they were still together.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Ku had never minded the dark. At least, not unless it was as complete as on those stormy, moonless nights. But she was starting to understand why Ori was scared of it. It was just like the masked creature who called himself the Siira had said. He was so easy to see in the dark. The foul, rotted yet living creatures were drawn to his light like moths to lanternflowers. They crawled and walked and floated, inflated like balloons by the horrible stench of their own decaying flesh.

And Ku was starting to understand even more why Ori was afraid of what his own light could do to her as well. He was always careful not to be too close to her if he formed any of the weapons from it besides the bow, and Ku had no desire to come closer than she had to. Just being in their presence made her feel uneasy – especially the Light-Talon. The blade flashed and danced and cut through air and flesh alike so easily in Ori’s hands, and the weapon itself hummed with a menacing bell-like tone at the upper edge of her hearing. It  _ sounded _ sharp. She trusted him completely, but she would almost have felt better if it were another spirit using those powers. She’d known their souls were different, opposite, but his light had still always meant comfort and safety to her just as much as Naru’s darkness. Now, for the first time, she was seeing it as something that made all her instincts warn  _ danger _ , something that made her skin tingle and her feathers puff out.

But right now, Ku was almost too exhausted to even be scared anymore. It was  past midnight. Clouds covered the stars, but they were thin enough that the moon’s silvery glow sho ne through, and while Ori was easy to see, it was also easy to see everything else with him around. As long as she could keep her eyes open. Her wings and her chest and back were in constant throbbing, burning pain. She could only fly in short little hops and glides, and she didn’t think she could do much better right now even if she had the feather back and didn’t have to keep preening the leaves back into place. As much as she wanted to carry Ori the whole way back to wherever the safe place he’d found was, because that way he’d at least stay close to her, she just couldn’t.

And fear itself had exhausted her, too. He’d kept her safe. Just like he kept promising. But she hadn’t. She’d let him fall. If it hadn’t been for Voice, the little orb of light, shouting her instructions before she too vanished, she would have forgotten all about what he’d told her, the story that seemed too crazy to believe. And even though she’d remembered, she’d been in such a state of grief and panic that she’d forgotten where he’d moved the fire to, and tried to go back to the wrong place, and when they found each other again they were both beside themselves with worry.

It happened again. She’d pushed herself a little too hard, and her wing had suddenly just stopped responding. She’d kept gliding, but she wasn’t going to clear the spikes, and he’d… he’d given his life for her, using the same powerful kick that let him spring off lanternflowers to throw her clear of the spikes… and himself down into them.

That time, he hadn’t just disappeared into the tar. That time, she’d looked back and  _ seen _ what had happened. She hadn’t been able to return to the Soul Link after that, just stay huddled close to where she’d fallen, sobbing and begging herself to wake up because this couldn’t  _ possibly _ be real.

Ku didn’t care how tired she was. She wasn’t stopping to rest. Not here. And even if they made it out, she didn’t think she could ever sleep again.

  
  


“Ku, it’s gonna be okay...” Ori patted her head. “I… I barely even felt it that time!”

_ Liar. _ “That’s not – that’s not the point!” She lit unsteadily on a branch. “Ori, you – you  _ died!  _ How are you just acting like – like nothing happened? How is –  _ how is this normal?  _ Stop trying to pretend everything’s okay!”

“You’re fighting a losing battle, young owl,” the Voice of the Forest said dryly.

But Ori’s ears fell. His tail almost dragged along the ground. “I’m sorry, Ku...” he said faintly. “It’s...” He sat down on the branch next to her, and leaned against her. “I was trying to make you feel better, okay? I know it’s – it’s scary, and… well, this is why I never told you about it before! I didn’t wanna give you nightmares!” He paused for a while. “It’s not exactly fun for me either. I’m not just… getting myself killed on purpose. But… look, I come back. You don’t. So if anything happens to me… if I tell you to run, and leave me… just do it, okay?”

Ku gulped. “Okay...” She understood what he meant. She wasn’t happy about it, but she understood. But she didn’t know if she could really do that. That time, she hadn’t had a choice about it. By the time she realized what he’d done it was too late to do anything to change it.

Lightning seemed to have sparked fires in some of the remaining vegetation, and the updrafts made it easier to get from place to place, but it was still hard work. They’d found a spirit well, but it was useless for her, so they pushed on. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep this up.

  
  


* * *

  
  


Ori’s jaw dropped. He couldn’t look away from the horrific scene before him, but he instinctively reached out to make sure Ku was still by his side. “Oh...” he gulped. “This is bad. This is really bad.”

“Is this… was that… a friend?” she asked timidly.

Ori shook his head. “No. He was an enemy. But...”

Howl’s body lay beside the edge of a tar pit. But it was obvious he hadn’t been killed by that, or even the creeping decay that had claimed so many lives in this terrible place. He’d been torn apart. The carcass was stone now, but it had obviously been mutilated before then. The eyes were gone, and most of the skin of the face, too. Fur was flattened like it had been matted with blood before the stone could touch it. His ribs were laid bare, and his belly had been torn open, petrified entrails strewn on the ashen ground like a just-cooled lava flow on Mount Horu’s slopes. He couldn’t tell if any part of the giant beast had been eaten, though, or just destroyed. Ori felt sick to his stomach.

“Did… did Shriek do this?”

“I think so.”

“She does not tolerate trespassers in her territory,” Voice said. “The Moki seem to be beneath her notice most of the time, but another dark hunter...”

They’d had another close run-in with Shriek. It seemed like she knew they were there, or at least that something was there. She’d been stalking around, kicking at tree stumps and digging at the ground. Ori was worried that she’d find their hiding place eventually, but something had distracted her and she’d flapped unsteadily away. Some other poor creature was getting torn apart somewhere, he thought. The scariest part was how  _ easily _ it seemed like she’d done it. Howl probably wouldn’t have been as big a danger to Ori now, but still… she was just  _ so _ much more powerful…

But they were getting close to safety. They’d had to go far to the north, but they were finally making their way to the west again, back towards the waterway. At this rate they’d be under Kwolok’s protection by morning, he thought.

  
  


It was too good to be true. Of course it was to good to be true. Ori didn’t see what had flown overhead, but a shadow swooped across the moon. Something cried out in pain and was quickly silenced, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He felt bad about being relieved that some other creature had died, but as long as it wasn’t  _ them… _

But the place she chose to land blocked their path. Something that must have been as big as Naru dangled limply in her talons. She tore at it savagely, and she was so close Ori could  _ hear _ the flesh rip and bones crack. There was no way out from the small patch of cover without risking being seen. They were trapped.

“Ori!” Ku whispered. “I see it! The feather!”

“Huh?”

“It’s right _there!_ In that tree!”

It was dangerous. It was  _ so _ dangerous. If Shriek so much as glanced in that direction… but the leaves had been slowly falling apart. They kept having to stop  for Ori to adjust them, or turn them around and poke holes in different places, or add new ones to replace the ones Ku’d lost. She  _ needed _ the feather. They could make it to Kwolok without it, but they’d never get home.

And if they passed up this chance, Ori didn’t know if he’d ever find it. Not now that he’d seen how vast and how inhospitable the woods were. Eventually it would blow into a tar pit and sink or be carried away forever by another storm.

“Okay...” Ori set the Soul Link in the cover of a hollow where a gnarled trees roots had washed out underneath. “Ku, stay here. Don’t move or make a sound.”

Voice did an excellent impression of clearing her throat for someone who didn’t have one. “Ori? Are you about to do what I think you’re about to?”

“I don’t know. I can’t read your mind.”

“Are you about to just run out there to grab it?”

“The wind’s picking up,” said Ku. “I think we have to, before it blows away again.”

“If you’re seen, you’ll lead Shriek straight back to Ku.”

“No I won’t. If she sees me I’ll run straight in the other direction. If I get away, I’ll move the Soul Link. If I don’t...”

“Then the feather will land wherever you drop it, won’t it?” Voice asked. “ _And_ you’ll die, but since you seem to care about an inanimate object more than your own life...”

“I’ll do it,” Ku said firmly.

“Huh?” Ori took a second to process what she’d said. “What? No! Ku, that’s way too dangerous. If she sees you out there – alone -”

“I know, I know! But I’m a lot harder to spot than you in the dark, aren’t I? If she’s not _looking_ for me… it’ll be quick – I’ll just fly out and glide back.”

“That’s still too dangerous.” Ori said. “Voice you’re right, what I said was a bad idea too. But we’ve got to get it somehow...” He sighed. “Okay. Let’s leave the feather for now and hope it stays put just a little bit longer. We’ll sneak past Shriek, and… there’s more trees that way, lots of places to hide. We’ll find somewhere safe, but I’ll keep the Soul Link here. That way...”

Ku’s eyes widened. “Ori, you can’t -”

“I don’t believe it. You’ve actually made the plan _worse_ ,” said Voice. “I thought you said you weren’t getting yourself killed on purpose.”

“I’m not going to – I’m just saying _if_ she catches me, or anything else happens, I’ll be close...” Ori tried to keep his guilt over lying to them from showing. If they were too far away… Ori didn’t _want_ to die again, but if it was between dying once, or dying ten times – maybe twenty, maybe more – looking for the feather if they lost it again… just one more time. Just one more time and they’d have a way home, and he wouldn’t have to go through it again. He’d just wait until Ku couldn’t hear, and… just find a way to make it quick and painless. With spikes it was so unpredictable. He had no idea what would happen if he turned the Spirit Edge’s blade on himself, whether it would do anything at all, but if he used Ilo’s power, but _upside-down_ and without shielding himself… it would be instant, but his hands still shook from thinking about it.

“Ori, you can’t,” Ku said again, more apologetically this time. “Please don’t… please don’t leave me alone again. I’m sorry – I have to – I have to try this!”

  
  


Ori gripped a tree root so hard he thought the jagged, petrified bark would cut his hand open. He almost didn’t want to watch as Ku launched herself into the open. A small, black shadow flapping unsteadily out to the tree. She turned around sharply, almost colliding with it – but she’d got it! She glided back with the feather clutched in her beak, her orange eyes beaming with triumph.

But she’d clipped a branch. The rustle of the leaves might as well have been a rockslide for how loud it seemed. Shriek’s head – a thing that almost didn’t look like an owl at all, with a bony mask like the Kii’s and curling horn-like growths as big as small trees – jerked upward. Glowing white eyes that reminded him far too much of Kuro’s scoured the dead forest. Ori ducked behind the stump and held his breath. He clamped his ears against his head with his paws, fighting the temptation to move them and try to listen for where Shriek was. He could hear footsteps, but where?

“It’s okay!” Ku whispered. “She’s back to eating!”

Ori didn’t want to risk making a single sound. He just nodded and let out the breath he was holding. He hugged Ku tightly, and took the feather from her beak. It had a different feeling than any other object he’d dematerialized – not twigs or pebbles or maps, certainly not keystones or shards. It was a thing of darkness. But he’d had enough practice that even after all this time, it felt as natural as if it were part of him.

“Where’d it go-”

“Same place as the rocks. I’ll put it on you when we’re somewhere a little safer. Let’s go.”

They tiptoed out into the open – but just as Shriek tossed what was left of the carcass aside and looked up again. Ori thought he’d gotten into the hollow log fast enough, but there was an angry caw. Footsteps, closer and closer… if she saw him… something hit the bark, hard enough it made Ori’s ears ring. There was scraping against it, and then the entire tree trunk was lifted into the air and turned over with them still inside. Ku let out a soft squeak of pain and terror. But the monstrosity didn’t attack again. They crept out, saw her back was turned, and ran.

Somehow, she kept noticing them. Ori didn’t know if she could hear them, or if she could just feel his light was close by, but she lunged. They made it to a grove of withered trees just in time. The trunks and undergrowth were too dense for Shriek to follow, at least not quickly, but she beat and clawed and tore at them with savage intensity, screaming in fury. Her hostility washed over Ori like a wave of liquid fire. Even when he couldn’t see her behind them anymore he kept going, his concern for Ku the only thing keeping him from just bolting in a blind panic.

Ku flew over the worst of the thorns and spikes – and in places had to carry Ori – but her gliding was getting worse and worse. Brambles tore at their fur and feathers as they squeezed through narrow gaps, and when they made it through to the other side, her right wing was nearly bare again.

“You’re almost… almost done!” Ori tried to stay encouraging. Ku was breathing heavily, and she held her wing out like it hurt her. Her eyes had a glazed, unfocused look. “The waterway’s close – it’s not far over that ridge. Do you think you can make it there?”

“I think so...” her beak trembled and chattered as she talked. “I don’t know if I can carry you...”

“That’s fine, Ku, that’s fine. It’s probably safer that way anyway. I’ll follow you on the ground as fast as I can. Just land and rest whenever you need to.” Ori fumbled with the thread. How had Gumo tied it again? He thought he’d memorized the knots, but right now his mind was completely blank, and his hands were so shaky it was hard to even hold it. There were too many broken pieces too. He just had to… no, that wouldn’t work. Ku beat her wings restlessly. “Hang on, it’s not on yet. I’m just trying to get it straight…”

Then there was an earsplitting screech of rage. A blast of cold wind that made all the storm’s power seem like a gentle breeze tore the feather out of Ori’s hands and knocked him and Ku off their feet. The massive, stilt-like legs hit the ground so hard the half-buried log he was standing on was ripped from the ground. Splinters flew, and talons scythed through the air just over his head. Ku screamed.

Ori was on his feet again immediately, but being this near Shriek was like standing under a waterfall of boiling acid. His vision split into double, and so did the Spirit Edge when he tried to summon it. The malformed owl was breathing hard, her breath coming out as puffs of mist. Her masked, horned head tilted from side to side, like she was sizing them up. Deciding who to kill first.

“Ku… run!” Ori shouted.

“But – but -”

“Run! I’ll distract her, just get away!” He knew he was going to die. It didn’t matter – it didn’t matter – he had to fight this fear. But he couldn’t make himself move! It was like the creeping stone had frozen his legs to the ground.

Shriek made up her mind. She lunged for Ku, and Ori’s body finally responded. The Spirit Edge flashed through the night air – a wild swing, far off its mark. It caught her attention for a moment, but then she shook her head like a gnat was buzzing in her ear and struck again, her talons scraping the ground right behind Ku. Ori leapt at her face, slashing at her mask with all his strength, but she reared up to her full height, out of reach, and kicked at him. He twisted away from her claws, landing on all fours next to her wing. With her weight on it she couldn’t move out of the way, and his blade struck with hand-jarring force. But the thick, stony growth, almost like a hoof or claw growing around her wing, was barely scratched. Shriek aimed a halfhearted kick at him, but it was like he was just a vine tangling around her foot.

She was ignoring him. He’d been worried his light would attract her all this time, and maybe it was what had helped her spot them at first, but he wasn’t the one she was after.

The one she really wanted to kill was  _ Ku _ .

“Get. Away from her!” Ori screamed. He couldn’t hurt the stony wings. He wasn’t sure if even a blow from Spirit Smash would crack the hoof-like shells around them. But that was all he could reach… except with Spirit Arc. He barely even got it to form properly. The string kept hissing and sparking, and the bow wavered and twisted, sending the first arrow far off-target. But the second one found its mark in Shriek’s neck.

It didn’t do much. He never expected it to, it rarely took down stronger corruptions in one shot, but it was like Shriek’s darkness just swallowed it up. But it finally got her attention. Only, he realized he didn’t have a plan for what to do after that. The burning white eyes bored into his soul, and for a crucial moment, he was frozen in place. Voice’s shout startled him back to life, but not fast enough. He tried to jump out of the way, but a blow from Shriek’s wing caught him and slammed him to the ground. His leg was consumed by an explosion of white-hot pain. He couldn’t stand up, but he rolled out of the way of another kick, nearly falling over the edge of a narrow ravine. He clung to the edge for dear life, his paws sliding in the ash on the ground.

“Ori, let go!” Voice shouted. “She can’t reach you down there!”

He almost obeyed her. He almost let go. He could barely think straight with all the pain, it was so tempting to just give in and fall to safety. But if she couldn’t reach him, then she’d just go after Ku again. He had to do something… keep her attention on him… he pulled himself back up onto the ledge, and tried to form the Spirit Arc again, but he couldn’t concentrate on anything anymore, and the string just disintegrated. Shriek didn’t. The swipe from her talons was a glancing blow, but it sent Ori flying out into space. He saw the edge of the chasm getting farther away, and the glowing eyes staring down at him. Then his head hit something hard, and everything went black.

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Run! I’ll distract her, just get away!” The words kept echoing in Ku’s head. She’d tried – she’d hopped and fluttered away as fast as she could, but her wings were useless without anything attached to the feathers, and it felt like they were made of stone. It looked like Shriek’s _were_ made of stone. How did she even fly?

And now, she couldn’t make herself run anymore. Not after she’d heard him scream like that. There was a tiny little voice in the back of her mind reminding her that Ori couldn’t  _ really _ be dead, that he’d come back, that he’d told her to get away and save herself. But it couldn’t make itself heard over the gale of rage. Pain and hurt and pure  _ hatred _ radiated from Shriek’s aura as she reached down into the chasm where he’d fallen, and they struck Ku like the hail in the storm, tearing apart all other thoughts and feelings and leaving only blind, primal fear.

“Stop it! Leave him alone!” Ku didn’t even realize what she was doing until she was already doing it, already pecking and kicking uselessly at stone wings. “Leave him _alone!”_ A kick flung her away like a leaf. She bounced and tumbled, landing hard on her back, and the breath was driven from her lungs. The world split in half as she tried to stand. Death advanced on her on stilts of bone.

Ku remembered that she had to run, but there was nowhere  _ to _ run. She wasn’t fast enough, she’d just be caught, and… and…

_ The ravine. _ She’d heard Voice’s call too. Shriek couldn’t reach Ori. She couldn’t reach her. Ku ran, but she ran the other direction, back towards the edge. She tiptoed out onto a fallen tree that bridged the gap. Her heart pounded in her throat as she teetered on the edge. It was deeper than she thought, and the rocks were sharper. She could see Ori’s faint light somewhere down there.  _ Jump… _ she had to jump, but she couldn’t catch herself with her bad wing! She was going to fall, going to crash!

Then she saw movement above her. She jumped to the side, and Shriek’s wing crashed down, snapping the tree in half. There was no ground under her. Panic took over. Ku flapped helplessly in midair, trying to push herself back to the ledge. But before she could, something hit her impossibly fast and impossibly hard. She was dashed against the unyielding rocks, and she too tumbled limply into the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The part of the game where Ori was riding on Ku’s back was the most nerve-wracking thing ever, because even though I knew the game would be using the same saving / healing mechanics, oh my god I was TERRIFIED of hurting Ku because my heart was going: “Oh my god she can’t heal from life orbs and she doesn’t have a Soul Link I CANNOT let anything happen to this child!”
> 
> And then Shriek happened.
> 
> I can’t believe Moon Studios was actually planning to straight-up kill her off. First of all how dare you.
> 
> I WANT to give Ku a lot more screen time, because that’s one of my biggest annoyances with WotW, but her being hurt is kind of necessary to keep them in Niwen… and what, do you really? expect me to pass up an opportunity to injure my characters? :P
> 
> In terms of actual gameplay, possible unpopular opinion but the part where Ori’s riding on Ku’s back was my least favorite part of the entire game… except for the burrowing. Being restricted to using exactly two attacks and not having the option to dismount and scout ahead / clear out the enemies was just so frustrating when combined with the fear of getting Ku hurt, and flight is just something that IMO never works well in 2D gameplay.
> 
> Something that needs to be mentioned about Shriek: she already looks pretty darned intimidating and scary, but if you think about it… we’re (presumably) not owls. To another owl, she must look just utterly terrifying. Like, imagine what a humanized Shriek that stayed accurate to how fucked-up she is compared to normal appearance and proportion for her species – that would not belong in any media rated below “R” or “M.” Imagine a small child going up against the unholy spawn of Freddy Krueger, the girl from The Exorcist, the girl from The Ring, and Jason Vorhees. Like, when she was a child not as bad, but Ku is SO brave for standing up to adult Shriek at all.


	25. Scattered Fragments

Ori woke up back under the tree stump. Back where he’d put the Soul Link last. He’d died? No, of course he’d died. He’d only expected to buy time anyway. But he was alone.

“Ku?” he called softly. “Ku? Are you there?”

“She isn’t,” Voice said solemnly.

“What?” For once Ori’s heart wasn’t racing when he first came back, but it certainly was now. That was the tone of someone delivering bad news. “Voice, what happened? Is she okay? Did she… did she get away?”

“I don’t know. After you fell, I was pulled down with you, and I couldn’t get far enough from you to see what happened, but it sounded like she tried to fight Shriek -”

“She _what?_ ”

“- and then was knocked into the ravine just like you were. Shriek kept trying to reach her for a while, but she gave up. I… couldn’t see what happened to Ku, but she didn’t respond when I called to her.”

“A _while?_ ” Ori was already running, leaping over the brambles and spikes along the same path they’d taken before. There might have been a faster way, but he didn’t have time to get lost looking for one. He had to get back there _now!_

“You were unconscious for a long time before you died this time,” Voice said. “Ori… I think you should… you should prepare yourself for the worst.”

It was still night, there was still no sign of the sun, but the moon was much higher in the sky when Ori made it back to the ravine. Without any over from the trees a cold, gentle rain soothed the cuts and scrapes he’d caused in his haste to reach her. But now he tiptoed out, scanning the sky and the horizon for any sign of that terrible shadow.

“Ku?” he called softly. “Ku?”

There was no answer. But he didn’t need one to find her again this time. She lay crumpled and motionless at the bottom of the narrow canyon, with fallen rocks and the two halves of a snapped tree scattered around her. The walls above her bore deep claw marks.

“Ku!” Ori jumped down from the rim and rushed to her side. “Oh no – Please don’t be dead please don’t be dead please don’t be dead!”

Her body was cold and damp, and so terribly still. But she was breathing, so slow and shallow he barely noticed. Ori put his ear to her chest, and heard a faint heartbeat. She was alive! But his relief was short-lived. “Ku? Ku, wake up.”

She didn’t respond, not to his voice, not to his touch. She just lay there, her eyes shut like she was just sleeping. But Ori knew she wasn’t asleep. She’d never sleep like this, her wings and legs splayed out at odd angles, lying in the shallow stream of cold rainwater that trickled down the gully. Her feathers were sticky with blood around a gash in her side. It wasn’t bleeding that much, and it didn’t look that deep, but it must have hurt so much, and yet the pain didn’t rouse her.

“Voice...” Ori’s own voice almost failed him, almost shattered like his throat had turned to stone. “Voice, what do I do? I – help...”

“I don’t think there’s anything we can do, Ori.” Her tone was sad, but it was calm, resigned. Like she’d been when they found the two moki turned to stone. “Nothing besides hope she wakes… and I suppose try to keep her warm. You’re shivering in this rain, it must be cold for her too...”

It wasn’t the rain. It was sort of – he was shivering from the cold, but it was like ice had consumed his heart, freezing him from the inside out the way the gumon had perished. He clung to Ku as gently as he could, and tried to shield her with his own body, but he couldn’t protect her from the wet ground, or even most of the rain, and he could feel her breathing slowly getting weaker. Ori’s got faster, more panicked, more fearful, but there was nothing to  _ do _ with those emotions but try to keep them from burning him, from burning them both. It was too much… it was too much… why couldn’t he do something? Why couldn’t he do  _ anything? _

Then voices, a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar ones, came from somewhere in the distance above him.

“Are you sure this is the right place?”

“I’m sure. It’s the same way we came this morning – I don’t understand it, I swear there was a log bridge here. We crossed it!”

“Whoa… is that… an owl feather?”

“It looks like it.”

“Do you think it could be one of Shriek’s? These tracks look like hers.”

“They are, and they’re fresh!” the one speaking sounded alarmed. Wait – Ori knew her voice. It was Eema! “We shouldn’t be out in the open – come on, into the canyon! It’ll lead us right back to the waterway!”

“What’s that light? Down there!”

“Ori? Is that you?”

Ori looked up, bleary-eyed. The concerned faces of several moki peered down at him from the rim of the canyon. At first, he couldn’t form words at all, and even when he could, he couldn’t string them together. “Yes! I couldn’t – help! Someone help!”

“Okay – just hang on, Ori, we’re coming!” she scrambled down the rocky wall, followed closely by Snesh. The others climbed down more carefully. “What happened? Are you -” the life drained from her face as she saw Ku. “Oh no… is she -”

“She’s hurt!” Ori tried to keep from just breaking down into tears. He had to keep calm. He had to stay strong. “Shriek attacked us and – and I think she fell, and she’s breathing but she won’t wake up and I – I don’t know what to do!”

“Ori, stay calm!” said Voice. “You can’t help her if you panic!”

“Just telling him to stay calm isn’t helpful either.” Eema shot the orb of light a dirty look. “Ori, it’s okay. It’s okay. We’re going to get her back to a healer, and… we’ll do everything we can to help her, all right?”

Snesh looked at Ku with concern and fear, but also like she was some strange mushroom he was trying to identify. He tiptoed towards her, gingerly poking and sniffing at her. He pulled her eyelid open, looked around from side to side, and grabbed Ori’s wrist, pulling him closer.

“What are you -”

“Your light, I need your light.”

“What? I – She’s Dark, light would -”

“No, like sunlight! Just wave your hand over her eyes – a little farther so I can see!”

The light shining in her eyes didn’t wake Ku, but Snesh seemed satisfied with what he saw. But when he sniffed at the wound in her side, he recoiled. “This is bad,” he said. “It’s not deep, but it’s… infected. We have to get her to Kwolok. Fast.”

* * *

  
  


Ori spent the entire journey back in a daze. He didn’t let any corruptions get near the rest of the group, but it was like his body was just moving on its own. If it wasn’t for Voice, he probably would have walked off a cliff, not thinking about where he was going. It was like a dream, like he was just a ghost floating around unable to see or feel anything. No, that wasn’t true. He felt the cold and damp in the air. He felt the constant tension in every muscle threatening to rip his own body apart. He felt the tightness in his chest and throat, the feeling of wanting to cry with every breath, but he just  _ couldn’t. _ It was like something was holding back the tears like the broken floodgates at the Wellspring, but he didn’t know if he  _ wanted _ to fix it.

He’d never been so glad to see the moki. There were nine in total: three he knew, four he’d apparently seen even if he wasn’t in a state to remember them, and two were strangers. Tann explained that after what had happened with Yeret’s family, he and another former member of Threepines Tribe had decided to search the Silent Woods one last time before leaving it to the Decay. Eema – her arm was healed now – and Snesh had come too, of course, and three more had joined the expedition at Kwolok’s Hollow. Ori wasn’t totally clear if Eema and Snesh actually had their tribe’s blessing.

They’d found two moki alive in the woods, and both of them were sick. One, a pup slightly shorter than Ori, hadn’t said a word since they’d found  him . The other wasn’t one of his parents. Ori wanted to say something, to try to comfort him because he recognized the state he was in. The young moki was little different than Ori had been when he’d just wandered the empty woods waiting for death to claim him too in Nibel’s blindness. But he didn’t know what he could say, what could  _ possibly _ make anything any better, and the only reason he wasn’t doing the same thing again was that Ku was still breathing.

Still breathing, for now. They’d rushed her to Kwolok’s Hollow tied to a stretcher made of spear hafts and branches and twine and bits of cloth from bags, and Tann kept reassuring Ori that the two elderly moki who were now examining her were the best healers in all of Niwen. But their faces were growing more and more concerned, and all Ori could do was stand off to the side, feeling completely helpless and completely useless.

Finally, Emat, the male of the pair, turned around and shook his head sadly. “Her back is broken,” he said simply. “There is nothing we can do for her. I’m sorry.”

“What?” Ori got to his feet, but wobbled and had to catch himself on a hanging vine. He stared at the moki in shock and disbelief. He must have misheard… he _had_ to have misheard…

“Her back, and who knows what else inside her,” said Ryn, the other healer. “We cannot know why she will not wake up, but… well, after this long it is unlikely that she will.”

“But...” Ori swallowed hard. The soft, spongy moss on the ground seemed to be pulling him off balance. All his strength had drained away, like he’d bled nearly to death. “But – there has to be something… something like life shards, or...”

Emat shook his head again. “I have heard of things that can heal creatures of the Dark in the same way, but with such severe injuries...”

“There _has_ to be a way!” Ori interrupted. “Gumo… Gumo brought Naru back, and she’s Dark too! I know it isn’t impossible!”

“Ori… I know this is difficult...” Voice began.

“What about you? What about – can’t you do anything? I know you’re Light and she’s Dark, but… he used a Light Vessel. The Spirit Tree’s light. I don’t know how, but… there’s a way!”

“Even if a way to heal her _exists_ , Ori… there’s something worse. The Decay has taken root in her body. Snesh smelled it – I couldn’t sense it in the Silent Woods with Decay all around, but here it is clearer. If it is left unchecked, it will spread, and grow, and consume, until… eventually, it will kill her.”

“ _Kill_ _her?_ ” Ori whispered.

“You have seen the fate of her kind.”

Ori’s tears finally broke free, silently rolling down his face. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t feel anything, barely even the moss underfoot. Everything was just numb. Cold and numb. “Then how can I stop it?”

“There is a way,” Voice sad flatly. “There might be another, one that would suit her nature better, but if there is it is beyond my knowledge, and I fear she does not have time to search for it.” She rose higher into the air, and her light, just a dim flicker before, began to grow brighter and brighter. “Our Light is lethal to Decay. It purifies, and cleanses.”

“What?” Ori’s strength was back in an instant. He was on his feet again, standing between Voice and Ku with his arms outstretched like it would stop her from flying over them. “What are you doing? She’s – Light can’t heal her, you know that! It’ll kill her!” Fear rippled through him, turning everything into blue haze. He had to – he had to stop her! No, he had to _run!_ She was bound to him, if he just got as far away from Ku as possible she’d be pulled with him.

“It will,” Voice admitted. “But it will kill the Decay faster. I won’t lie to you, Ori, it is risky. But we cannot let the infection continue to spread and gain strength, or she _will_ die.”

“But...”

“Ori… do you trust me?”

Ori hesitated for a long time. He tried to block out the terrible memories. The fear, the deadly Light filling the night sky, the burning pain. He glanced down at Ku’s right wing, at the useless feathers. But he remembered the dead owls he’d seen in the Silent Woods too, the hunched-over corpses withered and turned to stone. How was he… how was he supposed to make a choice like that for her?

But if there was a chance… if there was any chance… was this how the Spirit Tree had felt, that night when Ori collapsed in the meadow and his life slipped away? Neither of them had known the pain the Soul Link would cause him, and there’d been times when Ori wished he hadn’t been saved, that he had just died then and never come back. But he hadn’t felt that way since life had returned to Nibel. He wouldn’t take it all back… what would Ku choose? He didn’t know if she remembered anything of her siblings’ fate, but she’d seen the withered remnants of her kind too. She’d been lost in that horrible place for days. She’d kept flying even though her wings must have hurt so badly. She’d risked her life to get back the feather. No, Ori knew what she’d have chosen if she could hear and speak now.

“I trust you,” he said.

  
  


It was almost strange how pleasant the light felt. Ori felt fresh energy surge through his body, soothing all the small aches and bruises that hadn’t fully healed. The power flowed gently around him like a warm blanket, like a spirit well… like the Spirit Tree’s embrace. He felt calm and sleepy… but at the same time his heart was racing from terror. He clung close to Ku, listening for any change in her heartbeat or breathing. They sped up, but there was no sign of pain on her face, just the stillness, even as her darkness shrank away inside her. Wisps of smoke curled from her feathers.

Then the light faded again. The hollow was full of flowers, little white lilies that were painfully familiar. They were the same flowers that had sprung up around the place where the Spirit Tree brought him back. They still bloomed in that little patch of meadow. Ku hadn’t changed as far as Ori could tell. But that was a good thing. She was still breathing. Still sleeping.

“That’s all I can risk doing.” Voice sounded weary and filled with regret. Her light dimmed to a faint spark again. “That will keep the Decay from progressing for a time, but I cannot destroy it completely without killing her as well.” She sighed. “I have given some of my Light to the land. Every day it will brighten for a short time, to keep the Decay in check.”

“You… have to do it _again?_ ”

“I have made it so it will happen even when we are not here, but yes. It will keep her alive… for a while. I do not know for how long. Eventually the Decay will keep coming back, but she will grow too weak to withstand the Light. But even though her body is weak and broken, her soul is strong. We just have to hope that she can endure long enough to find a way to truly heal her. _If_ there is a way to -”

“There _is_ a way,” Ori said firmly. He stroked the feathers on Ku’s forehead one last time, then got up and followed Voice away from the patch of flowers. “Stop saying _if_. I’m going to find a way… no matter what it takes.”

“I know, Ori. I know you won’t give up on her. And if what you say is true, then… I have an idea. It’s not certain, but it’s her best chance.” Voice’s light flickered a little. “Now come. Kwolok wants to speak to you.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


“The Spirit Willow once watched over Niwen,” Kwolok explained. “She -”

“She kept the forces of nature in balance, and protected the land from the forces of Decay,” Ori finished, reciting what Sein had taught him.

“Yes… I suppose as a spirit yourself, you understand. But as I’m sure you have gathered, that was long ago. With the Willow’s end, her Light shattered. The spirits perished, and our land fell to decay.”

“Yeah.” Ori nodded. “I’ve seen… actually, Kwolok...” he wanted to ask what had happened to them… why they’d fought each other. But none of it really mattered anymore. All that mattered was saving Ku. “Never mind.”

“You have a question, child?”

“I… never mind. What happened to the Light?” Ori asked. “Voice is a… a piece of it, isn’t she?” He looked uncertainly up at her.

“You are correct,” said Kwolok. “The Light’s fragments were scattered, weakened… barely wisps. The Voice of the Forest is one such fragment, but she is a mere shadow of the being she once was. Left as they are, she and the others will eventually fade to nothing, and Niwen will be lost forever.”

His words landed with the gravity of great trees falling, crashing to Earth. Ori avoided the frog’s gaze as well as the orb’s. He felt a pang of guilt, like he was meant to have done something… like he was meant to do something.

“The Voice of the Forest fell into the marsh many years ago,” Kwolok continued. “The moki brought her to me, and I have kept her safe. The other fragments remained lost. But with the help of Niwen’s creatures – Tokk the Wanderer, Lupo the Mapmaker, and others – I have learned the places where they fell. The Forest’s Memory lies bound by frost to the north, in the mountains of Baur’s Reach. Its Eyes are lost in darkness to the south, deep beneath the Mouldwood Hills. Its Strength is to the west, drowned in the waters of the Luma Pools. And its Heart, far to the East, is buried by the shifting sands of the Windswept Wastes.”

“Its eyes...” Ori repeated. Like Sein. Only really Sein must have been more than that. “Its memory?” He looked at Voice again. “Is that why you can’t remember anything?”

“I think so, yes,” Voice said. “That is what I wanted to tell you. My knowledge, my wisdom, my memories… are all lost. And even what I did for her took all of what strength I have left. If there is a way to heal your sister as you say, I might have forgotten it.”

“So if we find your memories...”

There was a little flare of irritation. “Ori, if you collect half the pieces of a broken pot, will it hold water?”

If it was a pot, it wouldn’t matter how many he collected, Ori thought. But he understood her point. “Sorry...” he mumbled. “If we find all the missing pieces, and… and put you back together, you can save her?”

Voice was hesitant. “I don’t want to give you false hope… but I think it is likely. That I can save her… and that I can save Niwen. If I am made whole again...”

“Oh.” Ori turned to Kwolok. “Why didn’t you search for them then? If you knew where they are? If you knew… why did you just let the land die? Why did you just… let the owls die?”

Kwolok’s expression darkened. “I could not search  _ because _ I could not let the land die,” he said. “Without the Willow, and without the spirits, only a few creatures can hold off the Decay, and I fear I am the only one left… the only one who is still trying, at least. But many  _ have _ searched before you, and many have failed. Even your own kind.”

“The spirits?” Ori asked. Oh. He wasn’t sure about all of them… but the one who’d shown him the air-jump, he was sure had been looking for something. Had he been searching for the fragments? For _Voice?_

“Yes. But you… there is something different about you. About your Light. You have a power that I have never seen in a spirit before.”

“I think I know what you mean...”

“I do. The Voice of the Forest mentioned it to me the night you stayed here. If any creature can reunite the scattered wisps and restore Niwen’s Light… it is you.”

Ori nodded, and swallowed hard. He knew… he knew what that meant. It meant the places where the pieces had fallen were too dangerous. He’d have to face death again, many times more. He wasn’t turning back or giving up, there was no way he was, but he was still scared.

“But you are right, little one. I have remained idle in my hollow for too long, and the decay only continues to spread. I will join the search as well.”

“So… you’ll be going to the desert, right?”

Kwolok smiled, a spark of life returning to his eyes. “Take care, little one. I will help you where I can, and the Voice of the Forest will be by your side. I’m sure we will meet again soon.” He retreated back to his pond and slipped beneath the surface, leaving Ori alone with the hollow, soul-crushing worry and grief.

* * *

“I’m sure it will be okay, Ori,” Tann said. “She’s in good paws. Ryn and Emat… well, they’ve saved moki no one thought would pull through before. And… you know, some creatures are just too stubborn to die.”

“Yeah… I know...” Ori sighed. He turned the feather over in his hands. “I’m just… scared.”

He’d said goodbye to her for what he hoped wasn’t the last time. Part of him wished she could hear him. Part of him was glad she couldn’t. She’d been so afraid of him leaving her again, but he didn’t have a choice. “If she wakes up,” he’d said to the healers. “And I’m – I’m not there… please tell her I’m looking for a way to heal her, and… and I’ll be back soon.”

“Shouldn’t you leave the feather here?” Snesh asked. They were all returning to the Glades. Ori would be going farther, to the Luma Pools and to the mountains of Baur’s reach. “Don’t you need it to go home, once she’s healed?”

“I have a feeling I might need it too,” Ori said. He gripped it tightly at both ends and leaped into the air. Just like it always did, it caught the wind. He glided ahead of them and landed gently.

He hadn’t used it since Kuro’s death. Really, he thought, it belonged to Ku. But he hoped that if she were somewhere up there in the stars, that she’d be okay with him using it to save her daughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mokisquad are just the gift that keeps on giving with this plot. Like, at first I was just going: “Uhh we’ve already established that the Silent Woods are pretty much abandoned and any moki that stayed behind are dead, where are these moki coming from?” but as the story kept evolving I realized I had an actual reason for them to be there: searching for survivors since the waterway’s now open. I mean technically the mokisquad didn’t HAVE to be involved, but my god did Ori need a little bit of emotional support right then.
> 
> Another major problem I had was trying to make Ku’s healing consistent with the things I established in 100 Themes of the Blind Forest, i.e. Dark creatures definitely can’t be healed by Light magic. Solution? Put Ku on magic chemo!
> 
> Shoutout to EchoWolf31 for totally calling Ku being infected with Decay in the comments last chapter!


	26. The Smallest Amongst Us

“Ori… uhh… there’s something I need to tell you.”

“Huh?” Ori stopped in his tracks. They were close to the mortar worm nest just before the gate that led to the rope bridge. Eema’s ears were down, and her tail twitched nervously. “What’s wrong?” He backed away from the moki as if that would help him avoid whatever she was going to say. Snesh and Tann had noticed too, and they were wincing and not meeting Ori’s eyes.

“Well… Ori, I’m sorry, I should’ve told you this sooner.”

“I wanted to tell you,” Snesh muttered.

“But after what happened I didn’t think you needed anything more on your mind.”

“What? Eema, what happened?”

“Look… there was another reason we were in the Silent Woods,” she said. She hesitated and took a deep breath. “Yeret went missing. He disappeared the night after… the night after you told him.”

“Did you...” Ori trailed off. “Oh no…” Yeret hadn’t been with them. So they couldn’t have found him. “No, no, no, no, no!” he whispered.

“We found him, yes,” Tann said dejectedly. “He… he went back home.” The horrible truth was left unspoken, but it was clear all the same. He hadn’t been found alive.

“No...” Ori whispered, his eyes expanding until it felt like they’d fall out. His hands started to shake.

“I thought you should know before you got back to the village, so it wouldn’t surprise you that he wasn’t here.” Eema reached out towards his shoulder, but Ori stepped back and pushed her paw away.

“Don’t.”

“Ori, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you – we didn’t tell you! I’ll take full responsibility for that, I know… I know you didn’t exactly take discovering their bodies well, so I didn’t want you to -”

“It’s not about that!” Ori protested. “It’s… I’m sorry… this is my fault… this is my fault...”

“What?” Eema looked shocked. “Ori, I know it’s easy to feel responsible, but… you can’t blame yourself for what happened! You did the right thing, telling him.”

“Yeret made his own choices,” said Tann. “I wish I’d known, but...”

“I _did_ know.” Ori dug his claws into his palms.

“Huh?”

“After I told him, he said… he said he had to go home, and… I didn’t say anything! Well – to him, but – not to you, or anyone! It’s – that’s why it’s my fault!”

Eema and Tann exchanged a shocked look. Their mouths hung open a little, but they didn’t speak. And all Snesh could say was: “Oh...”

Ori wanted to say he was sorry. He wanted to say he’d forgotten, that he hadn’t realized what Yeret would do, but… he hadn’t thought. He just hadn’t thought. And it didn’t matter what he hadn’t though t , because maybe he could have done something. Maybe someone else could have talked to Yeret, or stopped him, or… or something, if he’d told them. He couldn’t make himself say a word of excuse or apology. This wasn’t even his battle to fight. This was Yeret’s family, Tann’s tribe, all the moki’s kind. He didn’t even have a right to be so upset, but he had, and he’d been so caught up in those… those stupid,  _ selfish _ emotions that he hadn’t thought.

“Ori, are you okay?”

That was it. That was the last straw. He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve them acting like  _ he _ was the one they should be worried about. “No. I’m not.” He turned on his heel and ran – almost past the mortar worms, but when one took a shot at him he remembered the danger they posed to the moki, he attacked. There were only two this time, and they both died quickly. Ori kept running, out over the rope bridge. Grom had some sort of car that ran along the ropes and had hooks to connect it to the cross-bars, but Ori didn’t need it. He didn’t need the bridge at all. He leaped off it and unfurled the feather. It was too far and the wind wasn’t on his side, but the river was full and clean. He dragged himself out of the current a ways downstream of the bridge.

“Ori, where exactly are you going?” Voice asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Then why are you in such a hurry to get there?”

“Because I don’t want to be _here_.”

“Being sarcastic isn’t helping either of us.”

“Look, I just want to be alone!” Ori snapped.

“You’re not alone, Ori. We’re linked together, for better or for worse, so it would be nice if you wouldn’t shut me out when I’m trying to help you.”

Ori whirled around, glaring daggers into the blue orb of light. “If you want to  _ help _ , why don’t you  _ leave me alone _ ? Why don’t you disappear and be quiet like you do when I  _ need _ your help?”

“Ori, this is ridiculous. I’ve helped you all the time -”

“You didn’t say anything about Yeret either!” Ori shouted. “You didn’t say anything when the Kii was - was blaming me for destroying Niwen all by myself!”

“That’s not true!” snapped Voice. “It seemed like you were close to committing murder when I stepped in, and you took your anger out on me then, too. Would you prefer if I hadn’t stopped you?”

“That’s my point! You didn’t say a word until _he_ needed defending! You just… if I hadn’t yelled at him, would you have _ever_ said anything?”

“You keep telling me you can take care of yourself… but you want me to fight all your battles?” Voice asked, her tone biting like the Spirit Edge’s blade. “Whenever I try to help you, you get angry at me, but when I let you handle a simple conversation on your own, you get mad at me for that, too. Am I supposed to just read your mind?”

“No, just… I don’t know!”

“But you expect me to,” Voice said icily. “And I’m tired of it. You know what? Suit yourself, Ori. I’ll disappear if that’s what you want. I’ll help you save your sister, like I promised, and I’ll guide you to the missing pieces, but otherwise? You’re on your own.” Her light dimmed, and vanished. Ori could still feel her presence, but it was so faint, like there was a wall between them.

“Voice?” he said halfheartedly. But he knew that either she couldn’t hear him anymore, or if she could she wasn’t listening. “Voice I’m sorry! I didn’t mean… I didn’t want you to just _leave_...”

The facade of optimism and determination he’d tried to build up for himself crumbled to dust. Why had he ever thought it would be okay – that Ku would be okay? Why had he thought he could save her? He couldn’t protect her from the storm, he couldn’t protect her from the pain of seeing what the Decay had done to her kind, he couldn’t protect her from Shriek. He’d promised her over and over that he’d keep her safe, that he wouldn’t let anything happen… and now she was slowly dying. Because he’d lied. Because he’d failed. Because he’d failed, and  _ she’d _ tried to save  _ him. _ And it had ended just like it always ended. Every time anyone tried to protect him… it always hurt them in the end. And every time he tried to make a difference, either he was too late or he just made things worse. He’d let Ku follow the geese too far, he’d sent Yeret to his death, he’d pushed Voice away…

  
  


Ori didn’t know when he fell asleep, or for how long, but when he was woken up he felt even more tired than before. Dried tears glued his eyes together, and half-formed visions of masks of bone, of Ku screaming as she tumbled into a black abyss, and of waking up in his nest at home, surrounded by decay-petrified statues, flitted away at the sound of a familiar voice.

“Oh! Hello, Spirit! I did not know you knew about this place! It is a good hideout, isn’t it? It is… I like my family, but it is nice to have a place to rest where you are away from them, isn’t it? Adventuring is hard work, which is why I say you should always be well rested, so your body is at its best, but my father doesn’t agree with me...”

“Mokk… this isn’t a good time...” Ori groaned. The little clearing was surrounded by trees and thickets, and was well out of the way of the village. That was why he’d wandered out there, but he guessed he had to go farther.

“Oh. Sorry, did I wake you up?” Mokk looked contrite, but he still bounded alongside Ori as he pushed past the curtain of ferns. “By the way, where is the light who was with you before?”

“I guess… I guess she’s resting too...” Ori said. No… that wasn’t the truth. “Actually… I made her really angry, and now she’s not talking to me...”

Mokk grimaced, and his tail twitched sharply. “I hate it when moki do that...”

“No… I… I kind of deserved it.”

“Why?”

Ori took a deep breath, and bit back the response he  _ wanted _ to give. What part of ‘not a good time’ didn’t Mokk understand? What part of him walking away didn’t he understand? He wanted to snap at the moki, to yell at him to stop following him. Why would he even be all the way out here if he wanted to talk about it to  _ anyone _ , least of all him? “I don’t know, because I’m stupid, and weak, and selfish, and I – I don’t know, I’m scared and I took it out on her like an idiot...”

Mokk’s ears folded down one at a time. He tilted his head back and forth with a confused expression. “I do not think most of those are true,” he said. “You fought Howl, and you gave me the fang, and… and you had to be clever to fix all the gears in the Wellspring, right?”

“That’s not what I meant...” Ori muttered.

“Anyway, if you are scared, maybe you could do something to prove your courage? Like go to the Combat Shrine?”

“The what?” Ori didn’t really even want to know. The response was just automatic, because it was the only thing he could think of to say that was even close to nice.

“Opher the Weapon Master told me about it. I wanted to know how to do the Light Spear thing the other moki said you can do, and he laughed and said it is better to stick with a regular spear. But anyway, he said it is a place with… magic stones, that if you give light to them make it shine extra bright and attract Decayed to you from all around!”

Ori looked at him like he’d suggested setting himself on fire. “Great, why would I want  _ more _ things trying to kill me?”

“I told you – to prove your strength and courage!” Mokk said enthusiastically. “Opher said he used them a long time ago, but nobody has gone to a combat shrine _alone_ and come back since the days of the old spirits, so… that would be even better than fighting Howl, wouldn’t it?” The smile stayed on his face, but his ears fell, and his tone betrayed nervousness and uncertainty. “I would go myself, but my bravery is not in question.”

Those words were the last straw. Ori knew Mokk was lying. He knew he didn’t believe his own bragging. But that made it  _ worse _ . Not even he believed himself, he was just… just pretending he had to face death every day, like it was some kind of joke, some kind of game. There’d been a vicious, hateful anger seething inside Ori ever since he left Ku in the hollow, alone. Anger at the Decayed, at Shriek, at himself, at Voice, at  _ everything _ . After the Kii, he was afraid if he didn’t stomp the flames out they’d explode and burn him and everyone else around him. But it kept smoldering, and spreading, and building up like the lava inside Mount Horu. He’d almost lost control of it with Voice. But now, it had found a way out. And right then, he didn’t  _ care _ what happened anymore.

“Shut _up!”_ Ori screamed. He whirled around, tail lashing, and almost lunged at Mokk. The moki stopped abruptly, confusion and fear and _hurt_ spreading across his face. But Ori _wanted_ to hurt someone, anyone. “ _Your_ bravery isn’t in question? _Yours?_ You’re – oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense, no one’s questioning it because you’re a _coward_ and everyone knows it!”

“Huh? I – no, that isn’t -”

“It isn’t true? _What_ isn’t true, what part of it isn’t true? All you ever do is _lie_ , Mokk! All you do is lie, and – and take credit for what others have done when you’ve never done anything brave in your _life_ , have you? You’re not the one who – who almost got _killed_ by Howl – you couldn’t go into his den when it was _empty_ because he ran off and was probably busy getting his insides torn out by Shriek, you couldn’t even do _that,_ but you wanted to _pretend_ you’re some kind of hero!”

“I...” Mokk flinched away, staring at the ground. “I didn’t! You’re right, I wanted to, but you were right when you told me not to, and… I’m sorry! You said it was okay, and – and I just wanted to be brave, like you!”

“Like me?” Part of Ori felt sorry for Mokk. Part of him wanted to kill him. Mostly, he just wished it were true. “That’s the problem! That’s the problem, you don’t even know what’s it’s like! If you didn’t, you wouldn’t want to – you wouldn’t think it was so much fun being chased, and attacked, and getting blamed for stuff I didn’t do, and getting hurt and – and _dying_ , over and over and over! Do you think I _want_ this? Do you think I _want_ any of this? I – I don’t even have a choice! I just – I never wanted this, and it’s all – it’s all for _nothing!”_ Ori didn’t even try to form the focusing orb – he couldn’t have even if he had – but tongues of Spirit Flame leaped from his hands anyway, arcing and striking the ground and stabbing at Mokk’s fur as the terrified moki tried to back away. “It’s all for _nothing_ because nothing I do even _matters!_ I can’t help anyone, I can’t save anyone, I – I can’t even save my own sister!”

“She’s?...”

“Stop following me Mokk! Just – go away and – and why don’t you go actually _do something brave_ instead of playing with your stupid howl fang like it’s some kind of toy?”

“Ori, I’m sorry – if you don’t think I should have it, you can take it back -”

“Keep it!” Ori shouted. “I don’t care about the stupid fang, just – keep it, and Leave. Me. _Alone!_ ”

Mokk finally took the hint. The moki slunk away on all fours, with tears in his eyes, and Ori stomped off in the opposite direction, still seething. He felt Voice’s presence grow stronger, and saw her light become visible again in the corner of his eye.

“Don’t. Say. Anything,” he growled. “Whatever you’re going to say, just -”

“I wasn’t going to,” Voice said sympathetically. “What you said was harsh, but it wasn’t untrue. And… sometimes harsh words are necessary.”

“Really?” The surge of anger was rapidly dying away. Ori’s limbs felt weak and shaky again, and he blinked away tears. He’d… he’d wanted to say what he did, and he’d meant it, but now he wasn’t so sure anymore. It felt _wrong._

“Yes… Ori, you’re right. I should have stood up for you more. I’m sorry. I… I suppose it’s just like the wheels in the Wellspring. I… I didn’t know the answers of what to say, so it was easy to just stop trying. And I’ve been silent for a long, long time. Just… waiting. I must have grown too accustomed to it. But it was wrong of me to stay silent when you needed me. I… I was just about to give that moki a piece of my mind too, but once you did I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“It’s okay,” Ori said. “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I just…”

“I understand, Ori. I… wasn’t really listening to you, was I?”

She hadn’t been, Ori thought. But he didn’t want to say it out loud. “I just wanted to be alone for a while,” he said. “Or at least not have to talk about… anything. I… I don’t know what to do either.  And I’m just...” He wanted to reach out and hug the shimmering orb to his chest. He was desperate for any warmth, any contact, any Light. But she still floated too high in the air, just out of reach. “I can’t lose her! I – I can’t and I’m – what if it doesn’t work? What if there isn’t a way? What if -”

“Ori… Ori, I promise I’ll do everything I can,” Voice said sympathetically. “Let’s just take this one step at a time. What do you need to do next?”

“Find… find all the pieces of you.” Ori took a deep, but shaky breath. “I don’t know – I don’t know where to start, where to go, but -”

“Would a suggestion help right now?” she asked.

“I guess so.”

“Good. I was going to say you haven’t eaten in two days, which Opher has informed me isn’t good for you.”

* * *

“Umm… Ori?” Voice said. “This isn’t the Wellspring. I thought you were going to the Luma Pools first.”

“I changed my mind. I think… I think it’s better to go to the one in the East first – the one that Grom said his people found. Then after that I’ll never have to go through _this_ place again.” Ori kicked at the ash on the ground, scuffing it up into a gray cloud of dust.

“You know the other Spirit Well you found is farther East, right? And that you’re going the wrong way?”

“Yeah. I know.” Ori kept walking. A leaf fell nearby, and he flinched. The place where he’d met the Kii wasn’t that far from the well. He wanted to try to go around his territory, but he didn’t know where it even was. He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I just have to… I just have to see...”

“Are you sure it’s a good idea?” Voice said gently. “I know you feel guilty about the mokis’ fates, but I’m concerned that this will just be harder on you.”

“I’m okay.” Ori wasn’t sure, really, but… “I… I know, I just feel like… like if I don’t it’ll dwell on me forever.”

“All right… if you say so, but...” Voice trailed off.

“But what?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to help you through this.”

  
  


The old hut was just as Ori had seen it last. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes as he pushed the door open. He almost didn’t want to look.

The  mother and daughter, Ardi and Iomi, were just as they had been before. As they would be forever. Frozen in stone. Yeret lay curled up beside them, with his head pressed against Ardi’s shoulder and one paw resting on Iomi’s head. His eyes were closed, but the anguish on his face was unmistakable. He hadn’t been turned to stone yet, not all the way, but it was beginning to creep over his fur, freezing it into hardened spikes.

Other things had changed too. The petrified doll that Ori had found, and brought back to Yeret, was nestled against Iomi’s forelegs. The mate-token Yeret had given him, that he’d dropped and almost forgotten about, now lay at Ardi’s feet. The other half was still missing.

Ori’s breath caught in his throat as he tiptoed closer to the still bodies. It almost seemed like he could just reach out and shake Yeret awake again. But he knew he shouldn’t. Tann had said the moki’s custom was to let fire consume the bodies of the dead so their souls would be free. But encased in stone like this, and with no way to bring enough firewood, there was no way to do that for Ardi and Iomi. So they’d let Yeret stay here… so at least they’d be together.

“I’m sorry...” Ori rematerialized a large, flat piece of bark and carefully set it down next to Yeret’s body. The three figures he’d drawn on it in charcoal weren’t much more than scribbles, like the ones on the walls at home. Ori had gotten better at drawing since he’d made those, but it was hard to keep his hands from shaking as he made this one. Still, they were recognizable. Three dark, long-eared figures, two large and one small, stood hand-in-hand. Together. “I’m sorry what you said about spirits isn’t true.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to Ganymede105 on Reddit for creating “The 57 Precepts of Mokk the Brave.” I really wanted to include a reference to it in this chapter, but one of the original 57 Precepts of Zote from Hollow Knight ended up fitting better.
> 
> So here we go. Ori’s finally snapped. The Kii kind of asked for it, but Mokk really didn’t. Poor Mokk!
> 
> This scene completely changed from what it was when I first envisioned it. My original plan was to have Ori discover that the moki father was gone when he returned to the Glades after Ku’s injury, race back to the Silent Woods, and discover him, and Tokk was supposed to comfort Ori after he returned to the Glades in tears yet again. But as I write the story keeps evolving, and the characters keep going in their own direction.


	27. The Plains of Death

Night soon fell. Ori slept occasionally, in little uneasy naps, but whenever anything woke him up he set off again. It was how he’d slept in Nibel, with Sein watching over him, and the rhythm was starting to feel familiar.

He missed her. He knew Voice was trying her best, especially after their argument earlier, and he knew he  _ could _ look after himself, but he missed the way Sein used to help him calm down again after dying and coming back, the concern in her voice when she asked if he was okay, if it hurt, if he needed to take a moment to rest. Voice wasn’t like that. It wasn’t that she didn’t ever express concern, but it felt… hollow, somehow. He could feel it in her light, that she was saying the words for his sake and not her own. And he felt horrible for  _ wishing _ she felt that kind of pain and worry every time. It should have been a  _ good _ thing that she wasn’t making a fuss over him now that she knew whatever happened to him, it wouldn’t last. But part of him missed that worry.

Was that what it was like, losing her heart? She certainly still had feelings, but was it different somehow? He wanted to ask her what it was like, but he couldn’t work up the courage to. And he felt terrible for her. This land’s spirits had all perished, but could Voice even mourn them properly? Could she even  _ remember _ them?

As he traveled through the night, hunger and thirst slowly crept up on him again. He hadn’t stayed at the glades for long. Long enough for Opher and Tokk and Grom and the others to express their condolences, but he’d bolted down the extra vegetables Veral had offered – he’d offered a bowl of soup first, but marshclams were one of the main ingredients, and there was some sort of herb in it that was apparently pleasant to moki but made Ori’s eyes water just from being near the giant cauldron – and left as soon as he could. He was afraid of seeing Mokk again. Part of him was afraid he’d apologize, because he was still angry, but part of him was afraid he’d say something worse than he already had.

Slowly but surely, the woods changed. Ori left the graveyard that was once Owl Meadow far behind, into terrain where half the ground was lined with spikes, and half the rest was either bubbling ooze or fissures where fire welled up from within the Earth. Some of the stone trees still smoldered and glowed red, with steam rising from the hollowed trunks. Powerful updrafts carried Ori high above the blighted land, but he was afraid to go beyond the treetops in the dark.

“We’re close to the Weeping Ridge,” said Voice. “The Decay is much stronger here. Once we leave it behind, it should be easier.”

Sure enough, cra gs  of black rock, like Horu’s before the plants started to grow back, jutted from the ground, rising up into the blanket of low cloud. Ori hopped onto the rock face without thinking, but his hoof slid out from under him on the slick, smooth surface. He caught himself with his hands, but the rock’s edges were sharp and jagged. Pain ripped through his arm. He let go, and tumbled back to the ground, his fur already slick with blood. Only the healing power kept him from bleeding to death.

“How do we… how do we climb this?” Ori asked, still panting.

“I’m not sure we do.” Voice sounded almost… frightened of it. “I heard rumors, while I was with Kwolok, but I don’t remember anything like this. It would be safest to go around.”

“Which is how far south?” Ori said with a groan. But he was already walking… at least, until he saw the small cave in the rock. It was narrow, and the walls and ceiling were lined with stalactites and jagged edges, but it lay at the end of a stream channel. Water trickled into the darkness, and it had worn the floor smooth and slick.

It was dangerous. He knew it was dangerous. So far going into caves hadn’t exactly been safe… but they had gotten him where he needed to go, in the end. He set the Soul Link outside, just in case.

In no time at all, Ori was bleeding again. Another slip, another fall, another cut. Red streaks ran ahead of him as the stream went downhill, deeper into the ground. The only safe way to get through was to crawl. But suddenly, the cave opened up into a slightly larger chamber, and the stream disappeared down a black pit, like the throat of some giant monster.

He had an impulse to jump… just to see what was down there. The water had to go somewhere, and maybe it would be a lake in the depths. His cautious side told him it was a bad idea. He compromised, and drifted down using the feather. But the walls of the pit were so lined with jagged needles of rock that he knew there was no way back up.

There was a small lake, but it didn’t seem to lead anywhere. The water just disappeared into the earth. But the shore was a different color from the rocks of the rest of the cave; sandy and reddish, like the cliffs of Sorrow Pass. And the sand led to another water-worn passage where a faint reddish light was visible.

“We made it!” Ori sprinted along the path, hooves digging into the cool, damp sand. The light grew brighter, and dawn welcomed him with a blinding glare. There was still the night’s chill in the air, but it wasn’t as damp, and he could feel the sun’s warmth again. He stood there blinking and squinting in the daylight, and his panting turned into a relieved laugh. He was finally free of the Silent Woods, and free of the dark, cramped confines of the cave. The area seemed sheltered enough – a wide cave mouth under an overhanging cliff, with skeletal-looking dried-out trees and bushes.

“...Ori? Are you sure it’s a good idea to put the Soul Link here?”

Ori winced, closing his eyes and rubbing his temples. The sudden light had given him a headache. “It’s fine,” he said. “I know I can’t get back up that way, but we can take the long way around if we have to, can’t we? And if we find a Spirit Well, we can -” He paused for breath, and the wind changed. A gust sent grit flying in his face, and he was hit by the overpowering smell of death. Not like the Decay of the woods behind him, just rotting flesh. His eyes snapped open, and this time, his vision was clearer. “Oh no… never mind, it’s not fine, it’s not fine!”

Not all of the skeletal-looking things were really trees and bushes. Maybe even most of them weren’t. They were bones. It was like Howl’s lair, but worse. Much worse. Countless skeletons, from moki-sized to almost as big as Howl, were scattered across a narrow valley that was stained blood red by the morning sun. Some were half-buried in the sand, and there must have been more lost from sight entirely, but many had skin and flesh still clinging to the bones.

Ori was sure they hadn’t gotten there by themselves. There was no reason why half of Niwen’s creatures would just come to this place to die. And some of the skeletons were in the trees. It almost looked like… like they’d been impaled on the branches.

The reason why they were there soon appeared, sending Ori scrambling for what little cover the trees by the cliff offered. A black shadow in the sky swooped in. Ragged black wings kicked up a massive cloud of dust, and when it cleared, Shriek’s grotesque, stilted figure was silhouetted against the cliffs. Something big dangled limply in her talons.

Even from far away, the sheer malevolence in the owl’s aura tore into Ori just as fiercely as the blowing sand. It was like a constant gale, a storm of angry needles pushing him back. He peered out from behind the tangle of leafless branches, and shuddered.

Shriek gave a hoarse squawk. She dropped whatever she was carrying roughly. It lay still for a moment, but when she dug her talons into its back again it started moving – flopping around, trying to crawl away. She pounced, slamming her wing down on it with such force Ori felt the ground tremble. Her victim stopped moving for good after that, but she kept kicking and tearing at it, ripping entire pieces off and flinging them haphazardly, stomping it into the sand over and over and over.

“What is she _doing?_ ” he whispered, horrified. He didn’t want to look, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away. He couldn’t make any part of his body move. “She’s not even eating it...”

But he must have spoken too soon. Shriek finally worked a limb loose, or at least plucked it from the gruesome remains of her kill, and started to tear smaller strips of flesh from it. Even over the wind, Ori could hear the sickening noise of hide and sinew giving way.

“Voice… how do I get out of here?” Ori whispered. He looked back at the flickering flame of the Soul Link. It was so exposed… should he move it back into the cave? Should he return there himself?

“I think it’s best to stay hidden until she leaves.”

Ori shook his head. “No. I think she… I think she  _ lives  _ here.”

There weren’t just bones here. Skeletons impaled on trees, and horned skulls hooked over branches, but there were other objects too. Logs and gnarled tree branches, things that looked almost like some of Grom’s tools, and even what looked like some of the smaller wheels from the Wellspring. There was no reason Ori could imagine to bring them to this evil place. Not unless… not unless they were trophies, or… or decorations. It was like a gruesome, twisted parody of a home.

How long would she stay here? How long would  _ he _ be trapped here, trapped with this… this yawning abyss of  _ rage,  _ this endless black pit of darkness scouring away all thought and all hope and turning his mind into a withered husk like the dried-out old tr ee s. “I can’t take it,” Ori whispered. “I can’t… Voice we’ve gotta get away from her...”

“Okay… okay.” Voice was scared too. Ori could hear the tremor as she spoke in his mind. “Then the best time to get past her is now, while she’s… distracted.”

“I know… I know,” Ori said. But it was hard to coax his body out from behind the tree. Quiet… he had to stay perfectly quiet… if Shriek so much as turned her head… one footstep at a time. He was just glad the soft sand muffled them, and the breeze, and… and his hoof hit something hard and smooth. It slid, and something caught around it. He glanced down, and almost jumped out of his skin. A skull, as big as his own, grinned up at him with pointed teeth. The eye socket trapped his hoof like a snare.

It took every ounce of willpower Ori had not to scream. He didn’t make a sound, he didn’t even breathe, but reflexes took over and he stumbled and scrambled away, wrenching his hoof free of the skull with all his strength and sending it flying in the process. It hit one of the dead trees and broke with a sound that to Ori’s ears might as well have been a thunderclap.

Shriek twitched at the noise. She turned. Ori didn’t have time to think, he just dived for the only cover within reach. It was something like a tent… no, a tent made of bones! Ribs arched up on either side of him to a central spine. The tattered, dried up hide still clung to the bones, as did a few scraps of shriveled flesh. The smell of death was overpowering. The  _ sound _ of death too – the muffled footsteps, the heavy, ragged breathing, getting closer and closer.

Ori almost threw up. He felt faint, lightheaded, and his breathing was so fast he almost wasn’t breathing at all. He knew she was getting closer, but he couldn’t look out through the holes in the skin, or his light would show where he was. If she couldn’t already see – if she didn’t already know. Tears of fear ran down his face. She’d killed him before… she’d killed him before, but that only made the fear  _ worse _ .

Talons ripped through the fragile skin of the carcass, so close they almost brushed Ori’s ear. Not a strike though, just a grip, like  she was perching on it.

“She doesn’t know!” hissed Voice. “She’s looking around… this way, quick!” There was a brief blue flash on the other side. Ori bolted, racing back into daylight. No cover… no cover… there was a prickling feeling on the back of his neck. “Hide!”

There was nothing to hide  _ under _ , not enough to truly be out of sight, but there was a piece of gnarled driftwood big enough to at least sort of hide behind. Then an enormous horned skull, hooked over a tree branch. Ori clung to it for dear life, trying to fight the bile rising in his throat.

Shriek was definitely looking for him now. She’d picked up the carcass he’d hidden under at first – or at least torn it apart – and tossed it aside. He didn’t think she’d seen him, but it was only a matter of time if he didn’t keep moving, whenever he had a chance. As soon as Voice gave the signal he abandoned the skull and scrambled up the tree to a rock face, then onto a ledge. But there was nowhere to go from there, nowhere but an endless expanse of red cliff where he’d be a sitting target. But she’d spotted the skull swaying. He had to move now! Now! One of the dilapidated water wheels hung higher up, from a tree jutting from a spire of rock. It was too far to reach, but Ori could see the dried-out grabgrass clinging to it. He tried the grapple. He didn’t have a choice. It pulled him to the wheel, but just barely, and some of the grass was torn away.

It was taller than Shriek’s head – tall enough that Ori thought maybe he’d be safe hiding on top of it until she decided to fly again. But as she went to investigate the skull, the hornlike growths on her head bumped the wheel, making it sway dizzyingly. The tree creaked. Shriek looked up. Blazing white eyes met Ori’s, and narrowed in anger.

Ori ran for his life, springing up to the tree and dashing along it to the cliff face. Shriek lunged, leaping into the air and snapping at him. He air-jumped to the side just in time. There was no way out… no way out… ragged black feathers unfurled from her wings. Somehow, they lifted her bulk into the air, kicking up a billowing sandstorm of dust. The wind pulled Ori away from the wall. He was falling, falling into the maelstrom of swirling sand and feathers, falling towards death…

He pulled the feather out on reflex, only thinking about slowing his fall. An instant later, he regretted it. He’d be an easy target, he thought, drifting down like that. But the next stroke of Shriek’s massive wings sent him flying, twisting and tumbling in the air in an eye-stinging blizzard. He didn’t even know which way was up. All he could do was hold on to the feather with all his strength. He smashed into something solid. The breath was driven from his lungs, and his grip was broken with one hand. He felt himself falling, and sprang back to the wall. Rough stone broke his fall, but his hands and knees were on fire.

He coughed, and shook his head, blinking away sand. Shriek wheeled around, diving for him with talons outstretched. But there was a way out, below him! A narrow canyon carved into the rock – too narrow for her to follow! He sprinted along the narrow ledges, leaping over the pile of bones and tree branches choking the mouth. Behind him there was a crash, and a screech of fury. Ori landed hard, his ankle rolling under him, and something struck him in the back. He dragged himself out from under whatever had landed on top of him, and just ran.

  
  


“Ori! Ori, it’s all right! You can stop!” Voice shouted.

“Huh?” Ori’s body gratefully obeyed. He looked around, dazed. He couldn’t catch his breath… breathing too fast… panting, coughing.

“She can’t get you in here. You don’t need to keep running.”

“...Oh.” Ori leaned against the wall of the canyon. His knees shook, then buckled under him, and he slid to the ground, leaving a bloody handprint on the rock. His eyes were still watering from the sand. The canyon around him didn’t even look familiar. It was like his mind had just gone blank – like it had just gone out, and all that was left was the instinct to flee. His blood was hammering in his ears like Grom’s forge, a driving, nauseating rhythm. “Okay… soul link… here… so I never have to go near that place again.”

“You’re bleeding,” said Voice. “There’s a Spirit Well a ways back. You ran right past it.”

“Oh… yeah, I should… I should heal this, shouldn’t I?” Ori could barely even concentrate enough to summon the power. He stared at his scraped palms like they weren’t even part of him. He took a deep, shuddering breath. “That was too close,” he whispered. “If she found it… do you think she _did_ find it? While I was running, and if I’d died -”

“I don’t think so, Ori,” Voice said calmly.

“She already killed me once...” As terrified as Ori had been of Kuro… it was hard to believe, but he didn’t think she’d ever actually killed him. She’d come close. She’d come so, so, so close, but each time he’d encountered her he’d escaped with his life. He hated to think what would have happened if he hadn’t.

“She doesn’t know that. She’d already given up and flown away before you died. As far as she’d know, she just knocked you unconscious.”

“Why does she want to kill me so badly, anyway?” Ori asked. “Why… why did she go after _Ku_ like that?”

“I don’t know, Ori,” said Voice. “Probably just for a meal. When the moki found me, she’d already been hunting their kind for a long time. And… well, you saw the bones. And...”

“What she did to Howl?”

“Yes.”

“I saw what she did to… whatever that thing she caught was, too.” Ori winced at the memory of her stomping it into paste. He hadn’t really processed it until now, but it must have only been by luck that Ku hadn’t been hurt far, far worse. “Didn’t you feel it? It was like she _hated_ it.”

“I suppose so.” Voice paused for a second. “Ori, do you mind if I ask why this is so important to you? No one understand what motivates Decay to destroy life and spread itself – but understanding wouldn’t change it.”

“Shriek isn’t Decayed, though. Not like those Gorleks were.”

“It has not consumed her completely, no. But why does it matter?”

“I don’t know, it’s just...” Ori sighed. “She reminds me a little of Kuro. Ku’s mother. At first nobody understood why she attacked the Spirit Tree. It was just like she… like she hated the Light for no reason. But then we found out she had one.”

“What reason would an Owl have to attack your Spirit Tree?”

Ori explained what had happened that night, years ago, when the Spirit Tree called out to him.

Voice was silent until Ori limped back to the Spirit Well. It was tucked under an overhang in the rock. The morning sun barely reached down here, and the dry sand was pleasantly cool to the touch. “You’ve hardly talked about your true parent before. Is that why?”

“Yes.” Ori’s tail twitched irritably.

“I… Ori, I know what happened was terrible beyond words, but it sounds like it was just an accident. I’m sure he meant the best -”

“I know he did.” Ori cut her off. “I don’t… I don’t _hate_ him, and… I still don’t know if I forgive him, I just… It’s weird, I never really put it into words before, but when I’m around him I feel like I’m always being reminded of my brothers and sisters, and… I guess if I stayed there much it’d be like… like everyone who died was the price of getting me back, and that just feels… wrong.”

“So, you’re avoiding him to punish him?”

“What? No! That’s not… I guess a little, like I feel like it’d be wrong if he got what he wanted in the first place while everyone else paid with their lives for his mistake… but mostly it’s just because it made _me_ feel like it was my fault.” Ori stared at the red stone wall. Shapes formed and moved in the patterns of the layers of rock. “And… before Ku was born, I actually… I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do,” he admitted. Had he ever even told _anyone_ about this? He didn’t think he’d told Naru, or Ku, or Gumo, or even Sein or the Spirit Tree. But somehow it was easier to tell Voice because she didn’t have anything to do with what had happened in Nibel. “After what I saw I was scared that Light and Dark creatures weren’t really supposed to go near each other, and I thought maybe I really did belong with the Spirit Tree, and… and I’d still see Naru, but she’d… she’d have another child to take care of, who was like her, so… I don’t know. But when the other spirits were born, I realized… I guess Sein and the Spirit Tree weren’t really alone without me either, and… most of the creatures who died, it was partly the Spirit Tree and Sein’s fault and partly Kuro’s, but Kuro’s children… they _only_ died because the Spirit Tree was trying to find me, and no matter what happened after that, Ku was… supposed to have brothers or sisters, and she wouldn’t. And that couldn’t ever be fixed, but it kind of felt like… like the right thing after that was for me to… I don’t know, not take their place, but to… be with her, so she wasn’t alone.”

“Oh.” Voice didn’t speak for a while. “Well… Ori, I… I wish I could tell you something that would help you figure out all those feelings. It sounds like a confusing mess. But I can’t make any sense of it either. I know I lost something… everything, that was precious to me, but...”

“You can’t remember?”

“Yes. There’s little pieces. I know the longing I feel when I think about the Willow, and… well, so much about you seems so familiar to me even if the memories of the spirits are all fuzzy and jumbled together.”

“Maybe when we find your heart again, and your memories, it’ll be better?” Ori asked hopefully.

“Maybe. But I don’t know… I can’t remember, but I don’t think my family was ever so complicated.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact from my actual playthrough: I was so distraught over Ku’s injury that I kind of barely paid attention during Kwolok’s lecture and I was just like: “Hey, Burrow must be next I see a ton of sandy areas around Niwen that I need to dig through, right?” so I went straight through to the other side of Silent Woods not knowing what I was getting into. I then blundered into the Feeding Grounds, didn’t realize there was a freaking grapple flower, and thought I had somehow gone the wrong way and missed the ability that I needed to get past and soft-locked myself. The result was that it was EXTRA terrifying, and I think I literally teared up a little from fear on that section, and at the end of it that low brass scare chord that plays right after Shriek lunges for you and misses made me freak out because I thought there was about to be an escape sequence on top of all the nerve-wracking stealth.
> 
> In other words I basically did the whole Feeding Grounds sequence perfectly in-character, totally by accident. I just wanted to play the video game.  
> Incidentally, imagine playing the Feeding Grounds sounds in full surround-sound, at, like… 120 dB or something. Basically ear-bleeding volume. This is what being around Shriek feels like for Ori.
> 
> Headcanon: Shriek is basically still about 70% birb, and decorates her room with various interesting objects… as well as the bones of her victims. It’s difficult at first glance to tell which of the many skeletons littering the Feeding Grounds are intentionally placed there for aesthetic and which are just trash. Shriek is also only like 80-100 years old, which is, like… still the equivalent of a teenager or young adult by Great Owl standards, so her room being full of goth décor and dirty dishes is pretty much on-brand.  
> And yeah… Ori had a bit of the “only child expecting a sibling and being insecure about being replaced by his parents” syndrome. And really, the Spirit Tree producing such a large group of baby spirits so soon did NOT help Ori feel secure as a part of the Spirit Tree’s family at all.


	28. Ghosts in the Sand

Ori had never seen the sun, the source of all light, the source of life, as an enemy before.

Swallow’s Nest got hot in the summer, but not like this, not this oppressive, blistering heat without a drop of moisture in the air.  And back home, shade and water were never too far away. Here, there was no water  as far as he could see , and seldom any escape from the angry glare. It was like being inside the depths of Mount Horu. Even the constant wind brought no respite, the air was so hot.

Voice’s words still echoed in his head. “Is this what all Niwen will become if we cannot bring back the Light?”

The signs of what the barren land had once been were everywhere. Some of the Gorleks’ buildings were buried beneath the sand, but those that weren’t had mostly withstood the biting wind. Ruined bridges over long-dry streambeds, elaborate structures of stone surrounded by trees, tattered banners and scraps of canvas that must have once been tents or sun-shades, dried-up wells full of sand.

That, and the Gorleks themselves. He’d encountered a few still roaming the sand. Their bodies were almost falling apart from the ravages of the elements. Glassy, clouded eyes, skin dried and split by the sun and wind, fur matted and patchy. He’d just avoided them at first, but after one had knocked a ladder down under him and he remembered how dangerous the ones in the Wellspring had been he destroyed them whenever they saw him. Destroyed. He couldn’t even call it killing them, because it seemed like they were on the verge of turning to stone and dust like the creatures in the Silent Woods. Whatever they were couldn’t be called ‘alive.’

But the Gorleks weren’t as dangerous as the twisting, writhing worms that sometimes burst from the dunes. They weren’t that tough on their own, but they dragged him down  and  trapped his legs in the shifting sand. And worst of all was the desert itself. He wasn’t exactly surprised to find spikes and bulbous, thorny plants everywhere. The False Moonflowers, plants with stony, jaw-like leaves that tried to lure him in with the blue light and then bit down with bone-crushing force, were less expected.

As the day dragged on, Ori felt worse, and worse, and worse. He felt so weak… so tired… his body was burning up. The skin of his nose was dry, and it was so painful to touch it might as well have been torn off entirely. His mouth was dry too from constantly panting. It felt like it was full of sand, and he couldn’t even swallow without his tongue sticking to his gums. He was sick… dizzy… sometimes it was hard to even stand up straight. He knew he needed water, and badly. He would have done anything to find it… but there wasn’t any. There was no water anywhere.

  
  


Finding Lupo was an unexpected stroke of… he couldn’t call it luck, exactly. The cartographer was wrestling with a battered piece of canvas and a few poles, swearing under his breath. When he saw Ori, he waved halfheartedly and gathered the bundle up. “Oh! Hello, fellow weary wanderer! What brings you all the way out here? No luck in the Silent Woods, I take it?”

“Huh?” Ori stared at him, blinking slowly. He collapsed onto the slightly less hot ground in the shaded alcove where Lupo was attempting to put up his shelter. His brain was full of sand. Then he remembered. Lupo hadn’t been in the Wellspring Glades when he returned. He didn’t know. Ori really didn’t want to have to explain it again… but what else could he do? “No… I found her. We...” He pulled out the feather. “We almost made it out, but…” He needed a lot of help telling the story.

“The Heart of the Forest?” Lupo scratched his chin. “You know, I think Tokk once said there was a rumor about the Gorleks finding it, and taking it to an underground temple to keep it safe. But Grom didn’t know one way or another, so it could be, well… you know how Tokk gets about legends, and the Gorlek wonders of the past. That’d be like a dream come true for him.”

“A rumor’s better than nothing,” said Ori. “Do you know where I might find the temple?… or some water?”

“Do spirits even need water?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Ori and Voice said in unison.

“Huh. Silly me for asking. Well, I’m sorry to say you’ll have to look elsewhere. There’s nothing from here until the sea to the South, and that’s saltwater. As for a temple, it would probably be in the hills further north and east. That’s where the Gorleks’ great city was.”

“Nothing?” Ori repeated. “Didn’t you… don’t _you_ need water?”

“Of course, but not for some time. I’m on my way back to the coast, and I’ll probably stop at one of the streams there for a drink. For you it might be faster using Grom’s warp crystal.”

“Oh...” Ori groaned. “Why are you even out here? This place is horrible...”

“Well, mapping it of course! You might think there’s not much to map out here, but with the wind blowing the sand from place to place the landscape changes all the time!… Although the wind also makes mapping it a _challenge_ in other ways...” Lupo scowled at his tent. “Keeping my paper from blowing away’s been a nightmare. There’s spots that are out of the wind, but they’re hard to find without a map!” he laughed.

“And it’s hard to _see_ what you’re mapping with sand blowing in your eyes, right?” Ori shut his eyes and tried to shield his face from a gust with his hand. Even with the lighter breeze he felt like he had to squint. But Lupo somehow didn’t seem to have noticed. “How are you even keeping them open?”

“Hmm? Oh, I’m not!” Lupo tapped the skin next to his eye. “Not all the way.”

“Huh?”

“My kind have a third eyelid that we can see through – it really comes in handy in weather like this! I’d show you, but… well, then I _would_ get sand in my eyes.”

  
  


Ori ended up paying for a map, and giving Lupo the crude one he’d made of the Silent Woods even though the cartographer insisted the scribbles would have been payment enough on their own. It wasn’t like he could use the Spirit Light for much else, besides lessons from Opher and shards from Twillen he hardly even used and only bought because the strange creature seemed so thrilled to have someone showing interest in his wares. So far the map was proving useful, Lupo’s advice less so.

“There’s only two ways of avoiding the heat!” he’d said. “Travel by night, or go underground, like the Gorleks did!”

Traveling at night wasn’t an option. He glowed in the dark. In the forests and swamps, or in the fog of the Silent Woods, he’d gotten away with it. But here, unless he was in the depths of a canyon there was nothing stopping his light from carrying for miles. There’d been times when he was looking out at Nibel on a moonless night, and he’d caught glimpses of faint points of light somewhere in the treetops of the Sunken Glades that he was pretty sure were his siblings. Tonight would be the half moon, and it wouldn’t rise until well into the night. The Decayed gorleks seemed to have some level of intelligence, and worse, Ori had spotted Shriek’s shadow soaring over the dusty plains a couple of times. It was too dangerous.

Underground just sounded ridiculous. Ori almost thought it was a joke, until he found the one tree in the desert that was still alive. If ‘alive’ was even the right word for it.

The spirit who rested here was bigger and stronger than most of the others, and it seemed like he was one of the older ones. He showed Ori what the Windswept Wastes had once been – long before Lupo named them that. There were few trees even then, but the land was covered in grass, and later on the grass began to be divided into geometric shapes, stripes of green. The plains were dry, except for when massive rainstorms sent floods coursing through narrow gorges, but gorleks dug wells to bring up water from the depths of the earth and trenches to carry it to the fields. And the spirit of the tree helped.

This spirit seemed to have an obsession with playing around in the dirt and sand and mud. Ori hated him for it. Usually the Ancestral Trees didn’t show him unpleasant memories until they actually  _ died. _ He made his light solid and wrapped it around his paws into spade-like scoops that let him dig quickly through soft earth, then refined the technique further by forcing bursts of power out ahead of himself that broke apart compacted sand and soil until he was practically swimming through it.

When the Decay came, the spirit seemed to have gotten away from the fighting, because in the last fragment of memory the Willow stood bare and dark against the dusk sky. He was always digging, searching, in the barren fields. The water in the wells had turned to poison. Wilted plants turned to dust. Was he searching for water? Trying to dig a new well?

Then… he found something, buried under the rubble of a crumbled cliff. An orb of  golden light. Ori felt a familiar shock course through his body. There was no way… there was no way. It wasn’t  _ quite _ the same as Voice’s, but it was so similar, and the way it had linked its light together with his own… it had to be.

And then he’d died. He’d died carrying the orb towards the afternoon sun. Ori hadn’t noticed the pain of starvation and thirst in the memories because it was so close to what he was experiencing in the present. Not until the spirit collapsed, and his vision faded to nothing.

Then Ori was lying on the baking ground in just the same way, with a  blue orb of light hovering over him, flickering excitedly.

“Was that?-” he asked.

“Yes!” Voice was almost giddy. “Yes it was! He found it… me… that part of me! I think he must have been searching for the others when -”

“When the sun cooked him alive?” Ori groaned and pushed himself to his feet, leaning on the Ancestral Tree’s root for support. His vision immediately blurred and went gray. It was kind of funny, that the blazing light that had taken his life was practically the same color as the one he’d tried to save. “Uh… what would’ve happened to your heart when he died?” he asked nervously. “Would it...”

“I don’t know. When you were linked to your old forest’s Light, did you ever die without the Soul -” Voice stopped abruptly. “Never mind.”

“The heat must be getting to you too!” Ori said with a smirk. He made the mistake of looking somewhere near the sun, and colored explosions of light shattered his vision. “Uh… would it have… done something to it?”

“Destroyed it? I doubt it.” Voice sounded the irritated kind of embarrassed, like even though she knew she’d made the mistake she was mad at him for drawing more attention to it. “Most likely it just fell where he did.”

  
  


Ori searched the loose sand for what felt like hours using the burrowing ability he’d just learned. It was enough practice for a lifetime. Deeper underground the sand was cool, but the exertion just made him even more overheated. It was like the worst of the claustrophobia of confined underground places, but worse. He couldn’t follow the tunnel because it didn’t exist in front of him, and it just collapsed behind him and sometimes around him. When he was underground he couldn’t see a thing. The sand was  _ everywhere _ . Clinging to his fur, in his ears, in his eyes, in his nose and mouth almost suffocating him.

“I… I give up!” Ori panted. “I don’t think… I don’t think it’s down there!”

“I think you’re right,” said Voice. “I’m sure I would have felt its presence if it was close by. The rumor about the Gorlek temple is still the best lead we have.”

“Oh… okay...” Ori stared out into the distance, towards the hills. The air shimmered with brutal heat, but he could faintly make out unnatural shapes carved into the cliffs. It had to be many miles… many miles of _this._ He tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry. “I’m not sure I can make it that far.”

  
  


“Am I… am I dead?” Astonishment spread across the gorlek’s three-eyed face. He stared at Ori, then down at his hands. A stained axe, and the stone he’d been used to sharpen it, fell to the ground.

“Huh? N-no?” Ori didn’t have the heart to tell him how close he’d come. He’d emerged from the sand just a few paces away, behind him. He knew the gorlek wasn’t decayed – he couldn’t sense it, couldn’t smell it – but when he noticed Ori and abruptly turned, Ori had nearly formed the Spirit Arc as he jumped back out of range. “Why does everyone think spirits are connected with death?” he whispered to Voice.

“And you’re real? You aren’t the desert playing tricks on my mind?” The gorlek was about Grom’s size, but he seemed younger, with only thin bristles of hair on his face.

“No – I mean, yes, I…” Ori rubbed his temple, trying to make the horrible, throbbing headache go away. “Never mind… I’m real… you _can’t_ touch me to make sure.”

“Ori!” Voice said in a scolding tone.

“Sorry...” Ori muttered. But he stayed perched on top of the boulder, out of reach. It was bad enough having curious moki pups coming up and trying to test if they could poke their fingers through him, or grabbing his tail or ears. It was worse that a couple of adults had done it too. But it least it was easier to remind himself that they meant him no harm. But a creature big enough to wrap his fingers around Ori’s throat, maybe even his chest, was another story, especially after he’d had to fight off at least half a dozen that looked so much like him. He’d already taken a pickaxe through the chest. And the part of Ori’s brain that was worried about his feelings being hurt must have already boiled out his ears in the heat.

The strange gorlek looked taken aback. “Don’t worry! I escaped the corruption that befell many of my kin. And I meant no disrespect! I was taught that your kind had vanished from Niwen!”

“It’s fine…” Ori slid down from the rock, but kept his distance. “I’m from across the sea.”

“Oh. A fellow traveler? My name is Rall, by the way.”

“Ori.”

Rall’s top eye widened slightly. “Hmm. Fitting. But… Ori, I have a favor I must ask of you.”

“What?”

“You… wouldn’t happen to have found any water, would you? I fear my canteen broke in a fall.” He tapped the top half of a vessel with a wooden stopper, still attached to his vest by a cord.

Ori’s heart sank. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

Rall grimaced. “Then I suppose both of us are going the wrong way.”

“There’s a Spirit Well a… long way back,” Ori said. He rematerialized Lupo’s map, which seemed to intrigue Rall, but a gust of wind immediately made him put it away again. “I could bring water to there!” Probably not much further, Ori thought. Judging by the size of the canteen that much water would weigh more than a keystone. “Do you think you can… make it much further, or…”

“You don’t need to go that far out of your way!” Rall waved his hands disarmingly. “I’ve been living off the sap of gum-bulb plants for days now. A couple more won’t kill me!” He indicated a bulbous blue-green plant covered in short spikes that reminded Ori of the spinebushes that had been common in Nibel.

“Uhh… isn’t that a Decay-Plant?”

“No, but you aren’t the first creature to confuse them because of the spines! Here, I’ll show you!” Rall picked his axe up again and walked up to the plant. With a casual swing, he sliced the top off of one of its arms. “See? The flesh is full of water!”

Ori sniffed at it, and almost gagged. “I think it’s poisonous...”

Rall shrugged. “Maybe to some creatures, but we Gorlek are tough!… It does taste terrible, though. And a drink of water certainly wouldn’t do me any harm!”

  
  


“So you’re searching for the Heart of the Forest?” Rall asked as they trudged across the desert. He’d been reluctant to do much traveling by daylight – he said he’d been holed up in an abandoned hut until a few of the sandworms found him. But when Ori explained the danger nightfall posed, the gorlek nodded and said: “Makes sense. Down in the mines there wasn’t much point trying to get anywhere without a lantern, but here I haven’t dared to light it.”

“Uh-huh.” Ori barely had the energy to speak, let alone keep walking. His legs felt like they were turning to sand. He’d gotten desperate enough to try the gumbulb sap a ways back, and he’d felt sick to his stomach ever since. It really was awful: sharp and tangy and salty and bitter and sour all at the same time. It was the worst thing he’d ever tasted besides the corrupted water.

“Well, my people did find it, I can tell you that much!” said Rall. “The story I was told as a boy is that its light called out to the spirit Adzi, but he gave his life searching for it. A tree sprouted where he fell, and guided the Gorleks to it. They brought it to Gerora – that’s what the old city’s named - to keep it safe until another spirit would come to reunite the shattered fragments, but that day never came.”

“It has come now,” said Voice.

Rall shook his head sadly. “Then it has come too late. The fields turned to sand and dust, and we Gorlek were forced to retreat beneath the earth, into the mines. I don’t know what happened to the Heart, but my ancestors didn’t take it with them.”

“Then… it must still be up there, right?” Ori pointed to the ruins in the distance. “Lupo said something about a temple – if we went to the old city, could you -”

“I’m sorry, spirit, but I couldn’t,” said Rall. “I’ve never even been to the old city myself. The mines were all I knew.”

“Are there any among your people old enough to remember?” Voice asked. “Or any writings from that time?”

“Not anymore,” Rall said sadly. “The mines… we were safe there for a generation, but then...” The gorlek closed his eyes, and grimaced. “We were attacked. A beast came from the depths of the earth, a Servant of Decay, like… like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It… there was nothing anyone could do against it. I don’t even know if anyone else made it out alive. I’ve been wandering the desert for days, hoping to find other survivors, but…”

“I’m sorry...” Ori’s whisper was barely audible over the wind. He laid a hand on one of the gorlek’s massive fingers. The powers of light and dark met, but they weren’t enemies.

“Thank you, spirit,” said Rall. “You know… there’s an old saying, ‘That’ll happen the day the spirits come back.’ It was supposed to mean something would never happen, but… if a spirit has returned to Niwen, and I still haven’t found anyone, I suppose it’s a sign that it’s time to move on, and accept that… well, we must both be the last of our kinds.”

“No – you’re not!” said Ori. “There’s another Gorlek in the Wellspring Glades – Grom! He and a bunch of other creatures are turning it into a… kind of a village, and… and I’m sure you’d be welcome there!”

“Grom?” Rall said thoughtfully. “Doesn’t ring a bell. Is he from the northern tribe?”

“I… I have no...” Ori’s knees buckled under him. He scrambled back up, but he couldn’t speak. A wave of nausea left him shivering, and somehow feeling _cold_ in this terrible heat. He’d been trying to fight it off for a while, but it kept getting worse, and worse, and worse. “Idea...” He staggered forward another couple steps, then collapsed, his eyes watering.

Somehow, the gumbulb sap still managed to taste worse coming back up.

“Hmm. Well, I guess it must be poisonous to spirits after all,” Rall said sympathetically.

The world wavered and swam before Ori’s eyes. He lay limp and motionless in Rall’s arms, just trying to focus what little strength he had left into not passing out. He kept shivering, and sometimes his skin almost felt damp and clammy, even though it couldn’t possibly have been. His breath and his heartbeat were fast and shallow. For a while he’d been trying to use the feather as a sunshade when the wind was calm enough, but now he couldn’t even keep his arm raised.

It was true after all. Gorleks really were tougher than spirits. Ori’s body had finally succumbed to the intense heat. There was no chance of him making it to the abandoned city, or anywhere else, in this state. There was a real possibility he might die, he thought, just like Adzi had all these years ago. He thought he’d heard the words ‘Soul Link’ from Voice at some point, so he hoped Rall was mentally prepared.

Ori couldn’t actually remember where it was. He was pretty sure it was some time after he’d found Adzi’s ancestral tree, at least, and probably somewhere sheltered, but who knew where he’d find himself. And he knew he’d already been in bad shape when he moved it. Trying to travel in the heat of the day again would leave him just as exhausted and overheated. If he died, he’d have no choice but to risk traveling by night and trying to find Rall again, because he wouldn’t make it far otherwise. But even if he had the strength to set the Soul Link anywhere now, he’d definitely strand himself if he did.

There was another spirit well marked on Lupo’s map, though, and the Warp Crystal at the Glades should have had plenty of time to recharge. If he made it back to the Glades, he could return to the desert rested and with as much water as he could carry in dematerialized canteens for just long enough to activate the crystal. He and Rall would go their separate ways after that. He wasn’t sure they’d see each other again. The gorlek would have a long journey to the Wellspring Glades. By the time he got there, if Ori was lucky he’d have completed his quest and he and Ku would be safe at home.

“I have to admit, though, I’d heard about the sky, and clouds, but I never thought they’d be this beautiful...” Rall was periodically sharing his thoughts to try to ‘keep their spirits up.’ Which Ori guessed he was doing. He was helping one spirit stay awake, at least. Right now he wanted so badly to just let go of consciousness, but if he did, he was afraid he’d be letting go of his life as well.

“Would be nice if they’d cover the sun up for us, though,” said Rall. Then he stopped in his tracks. The gorlek squinted up into the sky, shading his eyes with a hand. “What’s that dark thing -”

“Ori, _run!_ ” Voice shouted, suddenly blazing with fear. “Both of you -”

The familiar presence hit Ori at the same time. He panicked, twisting out of Rall’s grip and throwing himself in a random direction. Something slammed into the ground close to him, so hard the dried-up earth shook, and a sudden gust of wind knocked him off his feet, sending him tumbling in a hail of sand. An earsplitting screech tore through his body and soul. He scrambled to his feet, saw movement, and reacted instantly, ducking and weaving out of reach. Then there was a much deeper scream – a choked cry of pain.

“Rall!” Ori spun around. Fear had given him new strength, at least enough to stand again, but when he saw _her_ it rooted him in place. Shriek was silhouetted against the evening sky, a mishapen shadow with two miniature white suns glaring at him. The gorlek was pinned to the ground by one enormous taloned foot. 

“Get away from him!” Ori snarled. He tried to form the Spirit Arc, but the string fell apart and an explosion of pain went off in his head. “Let him go!” Spirit Smash… he could at least form that… right now it was more of a staff… he had to just put whatever light he had into the head, expanding it as much as he could… and then attack her leg, he guessed. Buy time… do something.

Shriek narrowed her eyes, and tilted her enormous, horned head. She glanced down at Rall. He was reaching out for his axe. His fingers brushed it… if he could just reach it… that was Ori’s time to strike, if he could make himself move. But then, the last thing he’d ever expected happened.

She spoke.

“Let…” Her voice was slow, and the owl, if that was what she was, was breathing heavily. One word seemed to take an entire breath, and they had a gurgling, wheezing sound, like the voice of a sick creature. “Go?” She straightened up to her full height, lifting Rall helplessly into the air. His weapon was far out of reach.

Ori was too stunned to answer. He just stared up at the monstrous creature.

“Spirit!” Rall gasped. “Help – no – run! Run!”

Shriek made an irritated noise. She shook the gorlek violently from side to side. “Quiet.” She hissed. “You… want… darkfood?”

“Umm… yes?” Ori stammered. He looked back at Voice for any hint, any guidance. What was he supposed to do? What – Kuro had never said anything – Ku could talk, so he guessed it made _sense_ , if Shriek was an owl too, but… but _how? Why?_

“He… nothing. He… is food.” Another rattling intake of breath. “Where is… owl… you tell… I give...”

“ _W-what?_ ” Ori was trembling so badly he could hardly speak himself. “You want… Ku?” A spark lit inside him, a flash of anger. “Why would I tell _you?_ You tried to _kill_ her! What… what’s wrong with you? She said you’re… you’re an owl too! You’re her kind? Why -”

“Owls die!” Shriek lunged at thin air, stamping her wing against the ground. A blast of chilling _rage_ tore across the desert. The half-formed hammer shattered in Ori’s hands. He flattened himself against the ground, his chest burning. He couldn’t breathe… it was like his heart would just _stop…_ “All… dead! All… gone!”

“I don’t understand...” Voice whispered. “Is she talking about the other owls? In the Silent Woods? Did _she_ -”

“Voice – just – I don’t know either! Quiet!” Ori hissed. “Do you… you want to… to _kill_ owls?”

“Owls gone!” Shriek repeated. “No more… owls. Only… only me. Owl-friend… die… too. You… die. Owl… die. He...” She tapped Rall with a talon. He flinched, and gasped in terror. “I… not care.”

Ori swallowed hard, or at least tried to. His mouth was too dry. His heart pounded with bleak anticipation at what he was about to do. He forced himself to stand up, one last time. “Ku’s dead,” he said. “She died after you… after you attacked her. If you… if you want me...” He took one wobbly step forward. “You can...”

“Ori! What are you _doing?_ ” Voice had almost risen to a squeak.

“Trading my life for -”

“Lie.” Shriek’s eyes were narrowed to burning slits. “Stupid lie.”

The malformed owl looked down at Rall. She raised him higher into the air, and gripped his head with her other foot. And before Ori could say anything, before he could do anything… she pulled. The gorlek’s strangled scream was cut off in an instant. It looked so easy, just the slightest sign of effort, like she was picking an underripe fruit from a tree, and his head came off. His four arms went limp in Shriek’s grasp.

“There.” Shriek tossed Rall’s lifeless body in Ori’s direction. It rolled once, then stopped. Blood soaked the red sand. “You… keep.”

Ori tried to scream, but all that came out was a faint squeak. He couldn’t scream, couldn’t speak, couldn’t run, couldn’t even move. All he could do was just stare at the gorlek’s body in stunned shock. He couldn’t even cry. He felt the pain, the tension in his throat, but the tears wouldn’t come.

“ _Run!_ ” Voice was frantic in his mind. “Ori! She’s going to kill you! Get underground, now!”

Ori took a shaky step back. He had to run. He knew he had to run. He didn’t have a chance against her. But he was trapped in a swirling tempest of emotion. She’d killed Rall. She’d taken his life that easily, that casually, and Ori couldn’t do a thing about it. She’d have done the same to Ku – she almost had, and Ori hadn’t done anything besides stand there. Fear and grief and rage collided and mixed. Torn between trying to run and trying to fight, his body wouldn’t respond. Not until Shriek did. And her lunge was too fast. He’d just blinked, he was sure he’d just blinked, and white hot pain ripped through his body. He felt the sharpness of talons stabbing into him like spikes. The world spun upside-down, then vanished into the blurry haze of death.

_ Do not mistake her for some mindless beast, _ Kwolok’s voice warned in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter can pretty much be summarized as: F O R E S H A D O W I N G. And also giving Ori heatstroke. And Ori dies of heatstroke with minor assistance from Shriek.
> 
> So uhh, I guess ONE Niwen spirit gets a name? And I couldn’t resist making it a really, really bad pun.
> 
> Lol I just realized I totally screwed up. Much earlier, when I first introduced the Warp Crystal, Voice claimed that it’s not possible to return to the “home” Spirit Well from a well unless you’ve previously visited it, returned home via conventional means, and warped out to it. Uhhhhh… welp, after the role they played in Silent Woods it’s way too late to fix that. I’m officially blaming it on Voice’s memories being messed up, and nobody actually knowing much about how the things work. And the first time Ori tried using it in a way that broke that rule was after discovering Ardi and Iomi’s bodies, so he was too distraught to even remember it wasn’t supposed to work, and then it did.  
> Yes, Shriek can talk! And there’s a reason she can speak Spirit Tree Language but Kuro couldn’t, which will be revealed eventually.
> 
> There will NOT be a chapter next week. I've been writing not quite fast enough to keep up with posting one chapter a week for a while now, so unfortunately I need to take a week or two off posting the next couple of months to stay caught up, and next week is Halloween weekend anyway.


	29. Into the Gloom

Ori tiptoed along the narrow cliffside trail, hugging close to the rock face. He could have probably climbed along the wall itself just fine, but he was still dizzy and lightheaded from the heat and lack of water. Plus, even at the best of times he had to pay close attention to his handholds and footholds, and right now even though he knew Voice was watching too, he didn’t want to take his eyes off the sky even for a second.

Not now that _she_ _knew._

When he’d first come back, he was still in that state of dazed shock and grief. Then, as it sunk in what had happened, he’d curled up in a corner and cried his eyes out. It didn’t matter that he’d only known Rall for a short time, and half of that he’d barely been conscious. The gorlek was still a friend, and… and he didn’t have anything to do with any of this, and … and he’d risked his life trying to help Ori, and he’d gotten killed, and it was Ori’s fault. If it hadn’t been for him, maybe Rall would have waited for the cover of darkness – maybe Shriek would never have bothered with him at all. If Ori hadn’t been such a bad liar, maybe she’d have let him go and only taken Ori’s life.

It was a long time before he left the half-collapsed hut where he’d hidden the Soul Link. But he couldn’t stay there. It was farther back than he’d thought, and while the air had cooled down a little as dusk approached, just like he predicted Ori had come back still feeling like he was being boiled alive inside Mount Horu again.

And then it had gotten worse. It had somehow gotten  _ worse _ . Because Shriek had seen him out in the open again. This time he’d gotten away from her by burrowing into the loose sand of a dune, but… well, Voice had said what she’d done to him wasn’t pretty. There was no way she didn’t  _ know _ he could come back from death now. And not long after, Ori saw her again, tearing apart the abandoned Gorlek homes, smashing them into rubble with savage fury. One by one. Systematically. He wasn’t sure if she’d actually figured out exactly how it worked, or if she was just trying to destroy any place he could use to hide from her, but it was only a matter of time until she  found out at this rate.

He knew he had to get away from this place. He had to keep moving the Soul Link, keeping it hidden in slot canyons and caves. Even there – he’d had a corrupted Gorlek push a boulder off a cliff and nearly flatten him. Anywhere that was open to the sky at all was dangerous, even if Shriek herself couldn’t reach it, and even caves were bad news if there was only one exit that could be blocked off. And he had to be fast. It would be dark soon, and with her actively  _ looking _ for him, while she’d be almost invisible in the sky until the moon rose, Ori would be as good as dead.

The sand offered some shelter from both the sun and the monstrous owl, but burrowing through it was difficult and slow, and he was in constant danger of being attacked by the worms while he couldn’t even see them or do that much to fight back. Right now he couldn’t afford to tire himself out trying to use Spirit Flame, and nothing else really worked. He’d resorted to shortening the blade of Spirit Edge until it was about the size of a regular stone knife, and just driving it into their slimy flesh over and over until they stopped moving, but it was impossible to get out of an encounter with one unscathed. Blood and whatever the corruptions had instead mixed with the sand and got it stuck to his fur.

His only hope was Lupo’s map. He didn’t find the second Spirit Well until well after sunset, when the sky and the canyons were deep blue and it was dark enough that Ori was acutely aware of the little patch of desert he lit up. He was close to collapse, and jumping at every shadow, every movement in the corner of his eye.

  
  


Ori had never been so glad to see the fires of the village in the Glades, and smell the smoke and the scents of the forest, and hear the river, and feel the cool night air. He’d been this grateful for a drink of water before, but not for a long time.

He’d never been more anxious about seeing Grom again. He told him a bit about what he’d seen of the abandoned buildings and other creations, and the ruined city, and even the fields he’d seen in Adzi’s memories, but he couldn’t bring himself to even mention Rall, or his story of what had happened in the mines. At least, not to him. He didn’t know how to break the news that Grom might have been the last of his kind.

  
  


“You know, he does have a right to know,” said Opher. They were a ways from most of the moki dwellings, down near the river. “They are his people, after all.”

“I know, I know...” Ori took a deep breath. Calm… he tried to keep his Light steady, like Opher’s, but it just flashed and sparked like always.

“If you want me to tell him, I can, but I think he might be a little hurt that you wouldn’t.”

“Okay… I’ll tell him, just… just not right now, okay?” Ori said defensively. “Voice… can you… when I do, can you… help me?”

“Of course I can, Ori. I know you were upset with me yesterday, but… I did help you break the news to Yeret, remember?”

Ori winced. She was right. He’d been so angry, it was like the memory had just been blotted out… or twisted, corrupted.

Opher gave him a sympathetic look at the mention of Yeret’s name. “If you are worried Grom will react like that moki did, then… don’t worry. I’ve known him for a long time, and he isn’t prone to recklessness or fits of emotion. What concerns me more is Shriek’s behavior. You say she tried to trade the gorlek’s life for your sister’s?”

“Yeah. I think she said something about… wanting all owls to die or something. But that doesn’t make any sense if she’s an owl… _is_ she an owl?”

Opher shrugged. “Who knows. I wasn’t actually aware she could speak either. Then again, you might be the first creature to get close enough to her to find out and live to tell about it in a long time.”

“Only because of… you know,” said Ori. “And… she knows too. She knows I come back, and I think she might know there’s a specific place, too, and she was _looking_ for it. This is… this is why I was afraid of telling anyone about it.”

“Hmm...” Opher scratched his chin. “Well, you made the right move giving her the slip. She might be searching the desert for a while.”

“Yeah, but… what if she goes after Ku again, or – or after me! I… I couldn’t do anything! I couldn’t do anything but just… just stand there and watch her kill Rall! And almost kill Ku! And...” Ori forced back the tears. He tried again to push the emotion out of his voice. This time, he was more successful. “Opher… what was that… that move you used at the top of the Wellspring, when you saved me from that thing?”

Opher tensed. His eyes bored into Ori’s. “If I taught it to you, would you go after Shriek with it, looking for revenge?”

“What? I – no!” Ori jumped to his feet. “I wouldn’t -”

“Ori, please. Be honest with me. I’ve felt your anger boiling inside you when you returned here before, after Ku was attacked. And Voice has shared her concerns with me as well.”

“You what?” Ori whipped around, staring at the orb of light in shock. In betrayal.

“While you were talking to the others that night,” she hurriedly explained. “Ori, I’m sorry – you wanted me to help you, but… I needed to seek advice too.”

“You didn’t have to keep it secret from me.”

“I didn’t want to bring what happened up again while you were finally having a moment of peace!” she said. “And then… a good time to mention it never came up with everything else that’s happened.”

“Oh.” Ori groaned, and sat back down. He pressed the back of his hand against his nose. It was still burned from the desert sun, and parts of his ears and muzzle were too. “Never mind. It’s all right...”

Opher cleared his throat. “I want to aid you as much as I can too,” he said. “I know you’re in a desperate situation, and that’s why I’ve taught you as much as I have despite my… worries. But from what Voice told me you’ve lost control of your emotions, and your power,  _ twice _ , and both times you came close to seriously harming another creature. I cannot keep teaching you to use more and more dangerous techniques if I can’t trust you not to misuse them.” He let his staff rest against a rock, and stood, coming closer to Ori. He still radiated the same calm, but it was refined, hardened, almost  _ dangerous _ now like the Spirit Edge’s blade. Ori shrank away from it. “Do you understand?”

“Yes...”

“The Light of both our kinds is like a fire. If we let it grow out of control, fueled by fear and hatred, it can burn down a hut – a village – a forest.”

“I _know._ Believe me, I know.” Ori clenched his fists. No… he had to stay calm… He knew, but maybe he did still need to be reminded, because he was having to stamp out the sparks of anger again. “I don’t want to fight her. I just… I’m scared of her. What am I supposed to do if Voice and I do manage to heal Ku, but she comes after her again? What if she comes _here?_ I need a way to – to protect Ku, or – or the moki, or anyone else from her.”

Opher sighed and closed his eyes. He pressed his fingers against his forehead and shook his head slowly. “As I said, fear can fuel the flames too. But… no, you have a point. Shriek, the creature in the Wellspring, perhaps the one the gorlek spoke of as well… they are a danger, and the ones who can hold them off have gotten fewer and fewer. Kwolok has seen fit to place Niwen’s fate in your hands, and… perhaps I was mixing you up with others I have known. I know you respect the danger your power poses to others – if not to yourself...” He trailed off, staring up into the dark sky. “And I can’t imagine using this technique by  _ accident  _ the way easier ones like Spirit Edge and Spirit Flame can  be , so the damage is already done,” he said dryly. “Very well. I will teach it to you, but only under two conditions.”

“Really?” Ori felt a crushing weight lift from his shoulders. He leaned forward, his tail twitching in anticipation. “What are those?”

“First, I will also teach you methods of calming and clearing your mind, and you must promise to work as hard on those as on anything else,” Opher said firmly, drawing himself up to his full height. “Second, you must promise that you won’t spend all night practicing. I assume you hardly slept last night, or the night before. Make sure you get some rest.”

“I promise.”

Opher eyed him suspiciously. “If you’re having difficulty sleeping, there are herbs that can help. Tuley might have some, or you could ask one of the moki healers.”

“I… don’t think I need help.” Ori stifled a yawn. “Sleeping.” He knew Opher meant it as an instruction, but it felt more like he’d been given permission, and now his body just wanted to curl up somewhere and pass out.

“Hmm… well, I hope you’re alert enough to pay close attention.” Opher raised a hand, and blue sparks danced around his fingers. “I don’t know the original name of this technique, but my grandfather always called it the Lightspike. Nothing else I know can match its destructive power, but it is also extremely tiring. I can only demonstrate it a couple of times tonight.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Shame you didn’t make it far into the desert. The old gorlek city really is a sight to behold,” Tokk remarked. “Most of it’s buried in the sand, but I’ve explored bits of it a few years back. The wind’s brutal on the hills though, it’ll tear the feathers right off you if you aren’t careful! The trick is, if you don’t want to travel at night in the desert, then travel in the winter! But I don’t recommend that either, the nights are as cold as the days are hot and there’s nothing to build a fire with!”

“Ku doesn’t have that long.” Ori stared down into the deep, dark water of the river as it lapped at the makeshift ‘raft.’ Really it was just a couple of logs, lashed together so it wouldn’t tip over and left to float down the river. Ori had done his best to steer it with an unwieldy woodgrass pole, but after the second time it had snagged on something and pulled him into the water he’d left it to its fate.

“Yes, and I don’t think Ori needs to keep worrying about the desert,” said Voice. “Weren’t you going to tell us what you knew about the Mouldwood Depths?”

“Hmm? Squork! Oh, yes… the caves...” Tokk shook his head distastefully. He glanced at the shore. “Well, I can tell you one thing: We’re close. This looks like a good spot to put ashore, hmm?”

He took off, leaving Ori alone on the raft. It was in the middle of the stream, and the bank was too far to jump. It wasn’t a long swim, but he still hadn’t been looking forward to it.

  
  


Ori had left the Glades early that morning. The Owl Meadow moki had shown him where the gate into the Mouldwood Depths was marked on the maps Lupo had made them. It was close to the route the cartographer had originally marked as safest, but it was on the edge of a vast blank area. That wasn’t a good sign. So far the only area Lupo had refused to venture was the Silent Woods. But memories of pieces of paper didn’t translate to actually looking at the trees and the rolling hills covered in dark brown forest, and he was glad Tokk had volunteered to guide him to the gate.

It wasn’t that far south of Kwolok’s pond, but the land in between was dangerous, and it seemed faster and safer to let the Warp Crystal take him to the old temple and then let the river take him most of the rest of the way. Part of Ori wanted to visit Ku, but it would only have been for his own sake if she wouldn’t wake up, and after having to abandon the desert he couldn’t waste any more time.

That was why he wanted to explore this place first. It was closer to the Silent Woods than either of the other places where the wisps had fallen, but it was the farthest place in Niwen from Shriek’s reach. Underground.

  
  


“These hills are riddled with caves,” Tokk explained. Now that they were in the dense forest and he was having to walk, Ori was the one who had to slow down to stay at his pace. “The ground’s like a piece of Spongestone, if you’ve seen that. Not actually spongestone, mind you, but imagine if the holes were much bigger -”

“I think I know what you mean.”

“Good. Smart kid. There’s who knows how many miles of tunnels, with who knows what down there. Probably parts of the woods, I hear some of it’s collapsed into the ground. I don’t mind poking around a cave or two, but if it’s too dark to see anything without a torch, too narrow to fly, slippery rocks… bah! I’d rather leave it to the ground dwellers. Of course, you wouldn’t mind the dark much, would you?” Tokk said with a conspiratorial smile. “Having your own light all the time and having all your limbs free for climbing, hmm?”

“Uhh… yeah, it… depends on the caves!” Ori laughed nervously, remembering the Blackroot Burrows. It had been so cramped, so dark, so unnaturally, disconcertingly dark that he could barely see in front of him. And the places where he’d been trying to drag a light vessel which weighed more than he did around had almost made it _worse._ But none of the caves he’d encountered in Niwen had been anything like that. Dark, damp, slippery, dangerous, but he could at least see. The Depths couldn’t be _that_ bad. “What about the forest? Can’t you just fly over most of the… spikes and stuff?”

“Take a look around you, kid. The trees are so dense the interior might as well be underground too. And I’ve heard some nasty rumors about this place...”

“Like what?”

“Well… before the Decay, the caves were Queen Mora’s domain,” Tokk said. “But nobody’s seen or heard of her or her people since before I was hatched.”

“What happened to her?”

Tokk shrugged his wings. “Don’t know for certain – from what I heard I’d expect she died and the Decay took over the place.”

“The name is familiar,” said Voice. “Kwolok said she was the strongest of the Old Guardians, but I can’t remember anything else about her.”

“Stronger than Kwolok, eh?” Tokk whistled. “I’d hate to meet whatever killed her, then!”

“That’s really encouraging...” Ori mumbled. “Thanks for telling me that right before I go down there.”

“Oh… yeah, I suppose you’ll find out, won’t you?” Tokk tried to pat Ori’s head with a wing, but he flinched and dashed ahead. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine...” Ori sighed. “I’m just… nervous.”

“Nothing wrong with being nervous, kid. If you weren’t I’d think something was wrong with your head! But I thought it’d be better to be nervous and prepared than carefree and surprised.”

“No… you’re right.” Ori scampered up a tree to get over a spike-encrusted ledge. “Is there anything else you know about it? You explored Niwen a lot before the Decay got so bad, right?”

“Most of it.” Tokk flapped up to the ledge beside Ori. “Not this place, though. Seen it from the air, but like I said, the trees are so thick you can’t see the ground through them – even in the winter there’s something in the way. And… well, this gate’s been sealed since long before my time, and it’s not to keep unwary travelers _out_ , if you know what I mean...” he trailed off. “Huh. Well, that’s not good.”

“What’s wrong?” Ori asked. “Oh...”

  
  


The statue guarding the gate was almost as big as the stone likeness of Kwolok, but Ori didn’t want to meet whatever it depicted. It was a colossal stone spider, with too many beady eyes of crystal that shone a ghostly yellow. Two of the statue’s arms were raised in the air, but Ori could see gaps in the stonework as if they could raise higher. A small boulder hung from each, attached by a rope that showed no signs of age. Stone sconces around it burned with a dull orange flame like the lanterns in the Misty Woods. And an uneven vertical shaft descended into the pitch black depths of the earth. Ori could see spikes on the sides, and something fibrous and pulsating that reminded him uncomfortably of the egg sacks in the Spider Coves back in Nibel, but he couldn’t see the bottom. A musty,  _ evil _ smell wafted from it.

  
  


It was  _ open. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mouldwood Depths here we COME! Aka the part where WotW just straight-up becomes a horror game.
> 
> Decided to give Tokk some screen time, since I cut his quest in Windswept Wastes.
> 
> Also, we are now officially past the 100,000 word mark! I just want to say thank you so much to all my commenters, your feedback and support really means a lot to me! Stay tuned for the dark and painful road ahead for Ori!


	30. Little Light, Lonely Light

“I _really_ don’t like this place...” Ori whispered. He tiptoed through the caverns, afraid to even touch anything. “It’s like it’s… like it’s _alive_.”

“I don’t like it either, Ori,” said Voice. She’d been keeping her physical form more, and Ori noticed she was staying closer to him than usual. “If this wasn’t where the Eyes of the Forest sank into sightless night, I’d be telling you to turn back. I think I remember… these woods were always dark. Our light hardly reached down here. But now, the Decay has made the darkness deeper… and more dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Ori took a deep breath. He’d tried to practice the calming techniques Opher had taught him, but they weren’t helping much right now. Ignore his senses? Let go of them? How was he supposed to let go of _this?_

“Yes. I… I think you’re right, Ori. There’s a… a presence. It’s faint, but it’s… I’m not sure how to describe it.”

“Like it’s always in the corner of your eye?”

“I suppose. It’s on the edge of my awareness, but… I think we are being watched. And I don’t think we’re welcome here.”

Ori nodded. He set the Soul Link in the safest-looking patch of ground he could find, but nothing truly felt safe. “I feel the same way,” he said.

  
  


There were spiders. Of course there were spiders, he knew there would be from the statue, but this was… this was something else. The webs and egg sacks were  _ everywhere _ . They covered every wall, even the floor was made of dust-choked, calcified webs, the spikes that sprouted from the surfaces seemed more like a bug’s shell than stone or thorn, and… and there were  _ things _ caught in the webs. Decayed insects of immense size, encased and entombed but not completely destroyed. Spiny legs twitched and mandibles gnashed. Wings ceaselessly beat and buzzed, driving swirling wind currents through the grotesque caverns. He’d only seen a few of the actual spiders – plus a couple of slimes and spittle-slugs. They seemed similar to the ones he’d fought in Nibel, but the balls of false-light they shot were surprisingly fast and difficult to avoid or reflect.

Larger carcasses loomed in the distance – a spider that looked almost as big as the statue, twitching but still entombed. There was the occasional ray of filtered sunlight, but mostly there was just the eerie blue and green lights of fungi growing from the webs.

And Ori felt it too. It was a faint, but constant presence that made his skin crawl and his fur stand on end. It was like there was someone, or  _ something _ , there with them, but it was coming from everywhere at once. It was Dark, but Ori had never met any dark creature that felt anything like this. The closest thing to it was almost… was almost like being in Nibel, not  _ close _ to the Spirit Tree but within his influence. Except instead of warm and calming and comforting, this was a cold, clammy darkness that brought the constant sensation of something moving just out of sight, something rustling, something brushing against the fur on the back of his neck, something  _ breathing _ on him.

Or maybe that was just the legs and wings.

  
  


“At least there’s Moonflowers down here,” Ori muttered. He looked up at the familiar-seeming blue light. “Or something like a Moonflower, I guess. How are these even growing down here? There’s no sunlight… or moonlight...” At least there was _one_ thing in this horrible place that was actually helpful, he thought. It seemed like the grapple would probably work on it, and that would make getting across the chasm in front of him much easier. He didn’t want to find out what was at the bottom of it.

“I… don’t think that’s a flower, Ori,” Voice said. “I think it’s -”

Ori didn’t hear the end of her sentence. It was drowned out by his own yelp of terror, and the disgusting  _ Shlick _ as the grapple pulled the ‘flower’ out of the ceiling. A hairy, chitinous leg the size of a sapling lurched toward him. He flung himself away, and landed hard, his hoof punching through the webbing over a small dip in the ground. It caught him like a piece of fabric, and the next thing he knew he was flat on his back, with the double image of the leg looming over him.

“Oww...” He picked himself up, rubbing the back of his head. It hurt to touch, and his hand came away wet. A rock? No… another leg, or a pincher, or _something_ , but it was hard and serrated. The healing power stopped the bleeding, at least he hoped it did, but it didn’t get rid of the dizziness, the nausea, the weakness, the racing heartbeat. Ori slumped against the wall, shuddering. The giant leg slowly went back up into the ceiling, like a much, much creepier version of the frog tongue statues in the swamp.

“I didn’t know you were scared of bugs,” Voice said without much emotion. You’re not usually _this_ jumpy.”

“I’m not scared of bugs. I’m scared of… I don’t know. This is just… it’s so _wrong_ , and… it’s like everything here’s made of something dead, except I don’t even know if these _are_ dead or not. It’s like we’re… it’s like we’re _inside_ a giant corruption or something!”

* * *

  
  


The farther Ori went into the caverns, the deeper and more forboding the darkness became. It was really starting to remind him of the Blackroot Burrows. His eyes should have been adjusted to the darkness by now, but he couldn’t see as far as he should have. The shadows were swallowing his light up in the distance.

And the spiders were worse too. These were a different kind, one that he’d never seen before. He’d almost mistaken them for regular Corruptions at first, but they were different from the others. He could feel a dark presence lurking under the surface, almost like the Gorleks. This was a place of darkness, there was no doubt about that. These must have been natural creatures once, warped and corrupted by the Decay.

Ori knew his light wasn’t welcome. He knew  _ he _ wasn’t welcome. But he never realized the true danger until he made the mistake of using the Stomp technique on one of the spiders. The cave shook, and more and more of them appeared. They emerged from the ground, from the walls, even from the ceiling, hissing and chittering and lunging at him. He wasn’t sure if they were…  _ coordinating _ , working together, or if they’d all just been attracted to the noise, but there were too many. Smoking, twitching carcasses littered the ground around him, and the air was hazy and filled with the stomach-turning smell of burning flesh, but there were still more of them. Ori wasn’t sure how many times he’d been bitten, but he was felt sick and his muscles had become so weak that even though he had the strength to form the Spirit Smash he could barely hold onto it. And he was getting more tired with every blow.

Panic seized him. He broke through the throng and fled into the darkness. The deep, all-consuming darkness. He could barely see a few paces ahead of him, even with Voice’s light he was ducking around webs and spikes and twitching legs on reflex alone. And he didn’t know the way back to the light. He couldn’t see the spiders anymore, but he could hardly see  _ anything.  _ Just his hand in front of his face, and… was it his imagination, or was his light getting _ weaker? _ Was it the spiders’ venom? Pain was everywhere, like a thousand needles in his flesh – a thousand hooks tearing – something icy cold, something slimy, but he couldn’t even tell if it was real or not.

“Voice? Voice, what’s happening?” Ori gasped. His chest felt tight, like it was being _squeezed._ Her light was fading too. Was she getting farther away? Or -”

“I don’t know!” Her light flashed and sparked. There was a burst of emotion. Fear – panic – and _pain_ , physical pain!

The darkness closed in. It was surrounding him, it was crushing him,  _ choking _ him, smothering him like water on a fire. Every limb turned to pins and needles, then excruciating pain and numbing despair. He couldn’t breathe. He clawed blindly at the darkness, unable to see anything but the faint outlines of his own hands anymore. He was drowning, choking on  _ nothing _ , just the darkness as it filled his mouth and nose and ears and forced itself down his throat. Burning. Freezing. Nothing but pain… he reached out and touched what he thought was his own arm, but it was hard and wet and too thin to his numb hands, like…

Bone?

Blue light flooded Ori’s eyes again. He took a shuddering, choking gasp. Air. Life. Light, a calming, soothing light around him. The Soul Link. And he could feel his own light permeate his body like it was new, like it… like it hadn’t been there before. Like it had been taken away.

“Ori!” Voice shouted frantically. She still buzzed and hummed with fear, like Ori had never felt from her before. “Oh, thank the Light… I almost forgot about this...”

“The Soul Link?” Ori stayed curled into a ball, ears flat against his body. “But… I’ve died with you around before. What…” He blinked away tears. He couldn’t remember dying like that, not ever. The darkness had been so strong it had just crushed him, broken him. Just like the dark presence that suffused the caves, it was almost a surreal image of something familiar, something horrifyingly familiar. It was how Kuro’s children had died. _He_ had died in the same way, not by talons or fangs, but from the strength and hostility of the Dark itself. And he never wanted to experience it again, even if it meant throwing himself onto thorns and spines a hundred times.

“I forgot it would pull me back too… before…”

“Voice… are you okay?”

“I… I don’t know, Ori,” she said hesitantly.

“Was it… hurting you too?”

“Yes, Ori. Yes, it was.” Voice hesitated. “Ori… please… be careful of that darkness. I was pulled out of its grasp before it was too late, but… I don’t know how many times I can stand it. And… Ori, I still don’t understand how – how you come back, but…”

“But you won’t?” Ori asked. The thought chilled him to the bone. He knew Sein had been hurt by Kuro. He knew Voice had been broken apart, and Kwolok had warned that her Light could fade, but… how could she _die?_

“No. And… I think if it surrounds your Soul Link like that… I don’t think you will either.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Underground Spider Hell! Ori's finally getting to experience Mora's power for the first time.
> 
> Sorry this week's chapter is so short. I just really wanted to put the cliffhanger there. The next couple will be longer to make up for it!


	31. Shine Brightly Enough

The darkness claimed Ori’s life three more times before he discovered the fireflies. He’d seen the faint golden glow of some sort of fungus through the thick, almost liquid shadows at first, and thought if he just got across it quickly enough, he could make it. Across the shorter stretches, he could, just barely, but spines lurked in the dark. Slowing down and watching his step would mean death, but so did a mad dash for safety. He stumbled into them, was left stranded with a hurt leg, and before he could heal it the shadows closed in again. And there were places where the distance was just too much to cover in time.

It was strange that the little insects not only weren’t engulfed and crushed, but they actually illuminated the darkness better than Ori or Voice could. Their light was dim, and it should have been much weaker. But they, and the glow of the fungi, and even of the false moonflowers and the slimes and other corruptions that inhabited this place, were allowed to pass unharmed by the hungry shadows.

“I’m not… sure they’re actually Light creatures like you at all,” Voice said. Ori’s antennae were so numbed by this point that he couldn’t tell the difference. He kept reaching up and touching them periodically just to be sure they hadn’t fallen off. He’d sprinted through the darkness to grab a keystone, and then rekindled the Soul Link, but it had been a close call and now the pain wouldn’t go away. “Perhaps they eat the glowing fungi down here, and that gives them their light?”

“Yeah, but they’re still… glowing things. Why doesn’t it attack them, too? It should still hurt Gray creatures, right?”

“I would assume so, but our nature makes us vulnerable to Darkness and Decay, just as it makes us dangerous to them.”

“Oh.” Ori wasn’t completely paying attention now. He’d had an idea. He grabbed onto one of the false moonflowers, fighting the urge to dodge as the spidery leg shot out towards him. He slashed at it with the Spirit Edge. It was too tough to cut cleanly through, but after several blows the glowing tip fell to the ground. He picked it up, gagging at the rotting dead-insect smell and the yellow-green slime that dripped from the mangled chitin. It was disgusting, but if it kept him alive…

He advanced carefully into the darkness, holding the glowing blue tip at arm’s length. But their glow quickly faded, and barely a few paces in Ori was left scrambling for the safety of a shaft of sunlight.

“Okay… well… that didn’t work at all!” he panted.

“You don’t sound all that disappointed.”

“I’m not.” Ori threw the foul thing away.

He guessed it made more sense, though. The Darkness wasn’t just a thing… it was an enemy. This place was alive, and it was  _ evil _ . Something like the thing in the Wellspring was hiding in the dark, or it  _ was _ the dark. Ori didn’t knew if his Light made him interesting to it? Appetizing? Threatening? But whatever the reason was, he’d attracted its attention.

An unsettling thought occurred to him. Did it leave the fireflies alone  _ because _ they helped Ori?  _ Because _ they led him deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of web-choked tunnels and caverns?

“Uhh… Voice? You remember the way out, right?”

* * *

Even with the fireflies guiding him across the longer sections of pitch black, the darkness caught him again and again. He wasn’t just following their lead now: he’d found that by waving the feather to create gusts of wind, he could shoo them in the direction he wanted to go. But they also flew faster when agitated, and sometimes he just wasn’t quick enough. One slip, one fall where he couldn’t get back up to the web-suspended tree rocks in time, and he was dead. Once one had just flown into open air. There was water below, icy, dead-smelling water, but it was so far down that it was out of the reach of the firefly’s light. Another time, the insect had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and been killed by a Decayspider’s projectile. Well, twice. It was just that the second time he’d made it to a spring plant by jumping off its shots.

“You’re being careless,” Voice said irritably. “Ori, this darkness is harming both of us. I already told you -”

“I _know!_ ” Ori snapped. Every time he died to it he was afraid it would be the last time, or that he’d wake up at the Soul Link just like always, but he’d be alone. “I know! I’m sorry, I’m trying but I – I don’t know what to do! I don’t know how to get past it!” His hands shook as he pulled himself up onto the ledge he hadn’t even seen, and dived for the safety of a shaft of sunlight that had made it down from the surface. “I’m not -” He swallowed, trying to clear a painful lump in his throat. “I don’t want anything to happen to you, but – but what am I supposed to do? I can’t do anything to protect you from this, I can’t get anywhere without trying to find a way through...” The phantom pain was _everywhere_ right now. It still felt like the breath had been sucked from his lungs. “Maybe we should turn back,” he said. His shoulders slumped in defeat. “You… don’t get angry at me, but… what do your eyes _do?_ You can still see… things, right?”

“To some extent, I can. I can’t completely remember what it was like, but… well, if I could see like I could before I was broken, before I was separated from the Willow, you wouldn’t be stumbling around in the dark like this.”

“Sein couldn’t see very far in the Blackroot Burrows, either. If it won’t… help us, maybe we should come back when… when you’re stronger, and -”

“Ori, you’ve turned back once already. Giving up isn’t the solution either -”

“Then what _is?_ ” Ori saw a Darkspider emerge from a hidden tunnel in the webs out of the corner of his eye. He brought the Spirit Smash down on its head, and choked down bile at the way the carcass writhed and twitched. He flung it away into the darkness with Reem’s power. “If you have any bright ideas, then… then...” There would be more spiders here soon. If he killed one, more always came, although they’d give up on that spot after a few were destroyed. He had to move on… through the dark. He darted out, tried to get a good look at the ground ahead in the little time he had, then jumped back to the patch of light.

“I don’t,” Voice admitted. “I’m sorry. I just… I’m frightened too. But we _have_ to find the lost wisp. I cannot exist like this forever. As long as a part of me is missing, darkness and decay will take me one way or another, and Niwen with me. The only difference is how long it will take.” She sounded so defeated. Broken, and weakened. But there was still a core of sharpened stone determination in her Light. “But even without my Eyes, I can feel that we’re close,” she said. “We can’t give up now.”

* * *

The second to last thing Ori expected to find in the lightless depths was an Ancestral Tree. The Spirit Well was less of a surprise since it was in a place where the maze of tunnels broke through to the surface anyway. And it was broken, without the faintest glimmer of Light. The Tree was far down, a lone point of light in a cavern surrounded by inky black nothingness. Its light was the faintest of all the Ancestral Trees at first, barely there at all. Its branches were leafless and covered in cobwebs, but they stuck out in all directions. He guessed the Ancestral Trees were still trees, and the only light this one had to grow towards was its own, so it surrounded it. Or was it trying to  _ shield _ its heart from the darkness around it?

“Is it… _dead?_ ” Ori asked. That didn’t make any sense, though. _Could_ an Ancestral Tree be dead? What did that even _mean?_ The spirits themselves were already dead, the trees just held an echo of their memories.

When Ori got close, though, the tree suddenly grew stronger. The cobwebs started to smoke, and fell away, and the haze in the chamber was suddenly lit up by a blue glow so strong it felt like daylight compared to the lightless caves. But still, the light couldn’t penetrate far in the gloom. It was like a bubble of normal cave, with the darkness beyond abruptly swallowing up any light that escaped it.

The Spirit had very little to show Ori besides his power. It almost felt like he was in a rush to do so. The power was deceptively simple. It was sort of like taking the Spirit Flame and solidifying and compressing it, the same way he formed the stabilizing orb Opher had taught him, or any of the other weapons really, but simultaneously spreading it out into something almost like a mist. But it was also a bit like building up the power for Charge Flame, but releasing it slowly, letting it just trickle away and keeping it confined near his body. Like spreading out one type of power in space, and another type in time, but both at once. It was taking the spirit’s natural light and making it far brighter and more powerful than normal, but restraining it and keeping it close to him. So many things about it were familiar, yet self-contradictory and confusing.

What it  _ did _ was simple enough, though. It created a sort of bubble of light around his body that was so strong that any creature of darkness or decay that touched it would start to burn. It was the opposite of the Spirit Flame. Ori knew it wouldn’t discriminate between friend or foe, or allow any control or aim other than to stop using it. Other spirits could hide within the bubble, though, and one of the few memories of it actually being  _ used _ that the spirit showed Ori, he’d used it to protect a wounded sibling against an enormous creature that looked like it might have been Howl, or at least another of the same kind. It didn’t seem like it would kill anything quickly enough to be  _ that _ useful or dangerous as a weapon.

But as a shield… it would keep the Darkness away. At least, for a while. It was tiring, using an enormous amount of energy to maintain the shield. Even its inventor didn’t seem to be able to keep it up for more than a few minutes – and that was how he’d died, trying to fight his way through a wall of the Darkspiders. They shied away from the bubble, but kept darting in for just long enough to strike at him, then retreating again only for another to replace them. He couldn’t get past them, and he couldn’t force them back fast enough, and all the time the oppressive darkness was beating against the shield, until finally he gave up and tried to retreat. But he’d already tired himself out too much, and he didn’t make it out of the caves before he collapsed.

It was strange, though… Ori wasn’t sure if he’d felt the presence of Decay from the spiders in the memory. They seemed somehow different than they were now.

  
  


Then suddenly Ori was awake again, back in his own body, but he still felt the darkness closing in around him. As soon as his hooves touched the ground again there was the hissing like rushing wind or water, and the needles and numbness and icy cold.

The Ancestral Tree’s light was fading. Ori watched with horror as the blue orb at its heart dwindled and went out. The bubble of safety shrank until it touched the branches, and they wilted, rotting and crumbling before his eyes.

“What?” Ori pressed himself against the tree’s trunk. Now there was hardly anything left but his and Voice’s light, and he knew they wouldn’t last long. “What’s happening? Is it -”

“We can talk later!” Voice shouted. “The ability it just taught you – use it _now!_ ”

Ori took a deep breath and focused, trying to blot out the spreading pain. He had to spread his light out, build it up and hold it in a bubble around him, like an air pocket in a flooded cave.  _ Push _ the darkness back, fill the space around him with himself like… like the Spirit Tree, and Sein’s Light, expanding and filling Nibel. He’d never thought about how it  _ felt _ to do that. It was like wringing his own life out of his body like water from wet leaves. It wasn’t exactly  _ painful _ , and it brought new life into limbs numbed by the Dark, but he could already feel himself getting weaker. His eyelids felt heavy, and there was a hollow, empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. Actually, it was kind of like what losing too much blood felt like.

The Ancestral Tree continued to disintegrate, branches turning soft and slimy and falling apart until the trunk collapsed into black gunk. Ori gave it one last look, then he ran.

  
  


“The Ancestral Trees are strong, Ori, but they aren’t eternal, or indestructible. They can hold back the Decay around themselves for a time. But their Light too eventually fades… and with a power like this constantly trying to break through its defenses… it was only a matter of time,” Voice explained. “I’m impressed it held out this long.” Ori sat slumped against the wall, turning a piece of an energy crystal over in his hands like he didn’t know what it was for. He’d only used the ability for as long as it took him to get back to a safe area that wasn’t just huddling next to a couple of glowing fungi or a firefly caught in a spiderweb, but he was already exhausted. “The tree used the last of its strength to share its memories.”

“You don’t even sound sad.” Ori broke the crystal with a pulse of weak, unstable Spirit Flame. “Wasn’t he one of your children? And he’s… he’s gone now, even that last little piece...”

Voice sighed. “I’m sad that I can’t remember him, Ori, but even if I could, he was gone a long, long time ago. The Ancestral Trees are like… well, like the stone creatures in the Silent Woods. Or not even that, they’re like the stakes the Moki drove into the ground near some of them. I thought you knew that?”

“I do, it’s just...” Ori hugged his knees to his chest. Tears silently welled up in his eyes. “Just that the last little… memories of him are gone now too, aren’t they? Like he never existed.”

“They’re not gone,” Voice replied. “They’re a part of you now. And part of me as well. As long as we remember...”

“Sein said something like that to me once,” Ori said. “I guess it makes sense, but… all you have to remember him by is how he died.”

“Yes...” Voice admitted. “But I still know that he fought bravely, and that even in death he held off the darkness long enough to pass his torch on to another. I know enough to… to be proud of him.”

* * *

The second to last thing Ori expected to find in the lightless depths was an Ancestral Tree. But the  _ last _ thing he expected to find… was a moki. The place wasn’t that far from the entrance, but it was on a path Ori hadn’t explored until now because the Darkness was impenetrable without the new power he’d decided to call Flash.

At first, Ori thought the form slumped over the leg of an enormous insect carcass was dead – probably long dead, from before the gate was sealed. How could a moki have gotten this far down otherwise? But then… he recognized the curved fang clutched in his hands.

“Mokk!” Ori shouted. He broke into a sprint, letting the shield of light fall even before he made it out of the shadows. “No – no – don’t be dead, don’t be dead -”

“Huh...” Mokk stirred. He groaned, and moved his paw in front of his face, squinting like he was trying to shield his eyes from Ori’s light. In the process he rolled off of the bug leg and fell limply to the floor with a strangled gasp of pain. He curled into a ball, dropping the howl fang and clutching at his midsection. But his eyes opened again, and suddenly came into focus. “...Ori?” he said weakly, and immediately flinched and shrank away.

“Mokk, what happened! What are – what are you doing here?” Any trace of the anger Ori had felt at the moki had vanished, leaving behind frantic worry. Mokk’s fur was matted with blood, and there were dark splotches on the ground.

“Fell...” Mokk pointed up somewhere into the gloom. His arm was shaking badly. His words were slow and quiet, slurred and mumbled like he was half asleep. “There’s… spiders here… spear broke… this helped...” He reached out in the direction of the fang, just brushing it with his paw. Ori noticed there was some sort of slime on it. Mokk tried to push himself upright, but his limbs wouldn’t bear his weight. He took another shallow, pained breath, and spoke a bit more clearly. “I was running from them, but there was a hole in the… in the floor with… webs over it. I fell, and my lantern broke and the fireflies got away. And the dark...” Mokk shuddered.

“But – what are you doing _here,_ why are you down here at _all?_ ” Ori’s voice rose to a near-shout. It echoed off the cave walls. He winced. That much noise would attract _something_ unpleasant, but he didn’t care right now.

“Looking for… I wanted to find… her eyes.” Mokk pointed at Voice. His own were bleary again.

“ _What?_ ” Ori yelled. “What were you _thinking?_ You – you came down here into this – this deathtrap? You could’ve _died!_ ” He fought the urge to grab the moki by the shoulders and shake him. But he was afraid ‘could’ve’ wasn’t the right word. There really was a lot of blood...

“I’m sorry...” Mokk shrank back, not meeting Ori’s gaze. “I just… I was just trying to do something brave, like you -”

“Like me?” Ori repeated, stunned. He’d heard those words from Mokk before.

“You came down here too, Ori,” Voice commented.

“That’s different!” Ori snapped. “I’m only down here because I don’t have a choice! Just walking into this place to – to prove yourself or something isn’t brave, it’s _stupid!_ ”

“Like you told me,” Mokk finished. “I didn’t know what… what it was like...” he stammered. Tears were running down his muzzle. “You were right, Ori… what you said...”

For a moment Ori couldn’t even move. The weight of what he’d said to Mokk, what he’d  _ did _ to him, sunk in like spikes on the underside of a falling boulder. He wanted to deny it, to say he’d never told Mokk he should risk his life in this pitch-black hell of writhing limbs, he’d never said to do anything like that. But he had. Not in those exact words, but he’d told him to ‘actually do something brave.’

This was his fault… he’d caused this…

“I’m sorry...” he whispered. His legs felt weak even though he’d stopped using the power. If he wasn’t already kneeling he would have collapsed. Ori threw his arms around Mokk’s shoulders and pressed his forehead against the young moki’s. He’d almost died. He’d almost died because Ori had tried to hurt him. It didn’t matter that he’d used words instead of the Spirit Edge. “I’m so sorry! What I said was – that was wrong! I didn’t – I didn’t mean to -” But he had meant it. At least, he had then. Now… he didn’t know if what he’d said was true – Mokk had been crazy enough to come down here, after all – but even if it was it didn’t matter. “I yelled at you because I was angry at Voice, and I should’ve just been angry at myself! I was just...” he ground his teeth together. “The only coward there was me. I couldn’t even… do anything but stand there when Shriek killed my friend!”

Mokk’s eyes widened, and came back into focus. “She is… but I heard she was just hurt, and you were trying to -”

“Someone else, Mokk… never mind. I’m… I’m getting you out of here, okay? You’re going to… you’re going to be all right.” Ori’s mouth felt as dry as it had in the Windswept Wastes. He’d panicked at the sight of his own blood so many times, but panicking at the sight of someone else’s was so unfamiliar. He tried to think back to how Sein talked to him when he was injured. “Where are you hurt? Do you think you can walk?”

“I… don’t think so.” Mokk spoke like it hurt to breathe. “After I fell, I crawled from… over there somewhere. In the dark. And they bit me -” Mokk reached down and touched the wound, and stopped. He took his bloody paw away from it and stared at it, then down at the wound again. Shock and fear spread across his face. “Oh no… that is… that is really a lot of blood.” Tears welled up in the moki’s green eyes. “Ori? Ori am I – did you come here to take me away? Somebody told me a rumor that -”

“No!” Ori shouted. “Shut up about the stupid spirits taking dead creatures’ souls away story! That’s not true, and I – I’m not letting _anyone_ die, including you!”

“Oh… then why are you -”

“I’m taking you to a healer!” Ori dragged Mokk to his feet.

“You’d better be quick,” Voice commented. “Every spider in these caves must have heard you just now.”

“Back leg is… hurt...” Mokk whimpered. “And I do not know the way out. I got turned around trying to run away, and...”

“I know! I know, just – I know the way out from here, just stay with me, okay?” Ori was trying not to hyperventilate, but not successfully. Voice was right. He could hear the skittering in the darkness. He took a deep breath and ignited Flash around himself. “Follow me. Mokk, forget the lantern, just follow me!”

For the first short leg through the pitch blackness, Ori tried to just walk beside Mokk, ready to kill any Decayed that came near. He didn’t know how hard it would be for a creature that could run on all fours to walk and climb with three. Eema had managed all right with a hurt foreleg. Mokk wouldn’t be able to stand up on his back legs, Ori thought, but climbing would much easier than with a broken arm or foreleg. But the young moki could barely move at all. He was almost doubled over from the pain, and as soon as they made it to a safe patch of light he collapsed and threw up.

Ori almost joined him. He’d had to keep the shield active for much longer than he expected. “Are you… okay?” he panted. “We’ll just go… one step at a time, okay?”

Mokk nodded. He was ashen-face and trembling, and stared blankly into the dark. Ori wasn’t sure if he’d actually heard him.

“Okay… let’s try like this.” Ori put his arm under the moki’s shoulders and dragged him upright. It was harder than he’d expected. Mokk was a little heavier than him, and his body was so long and flexible it was like trying to pick up a too-loose coil of thick rope. The Howl Fang dug painfully into his ribs. “Ow… maybe I’d better hold this.”

Ori forced his Light to spread out into the shield again. “Let’s go.”

“Ohh… light...” Mokk mumbled. “

“Ow! Stop pulling my ear! What – are you _trying_ to get me to drop you?”

“He’s lost a lot of blood,” Voice said. “And the spiders’ bite is poisonous.”

“Really?” Ori feigned surprise. “That’s funny, I somehow didn’t notice that all the times I was _bitten and poisoned_ by them.”

“My _point_ is that he’s delirious! Now you know what it’s like from the outside.”

“I am… trying to hold on. Sorry.” Mokk leaned his full weight against Ori, making him stumble.

“Then… hold onto my arm or something! And try to put pressure on that so you don’t bleed to death!”

  
  


The journey back to the surface was slow and grueling. Ori was lucky there wasn’t much of the deep, crushing darkness this far up, because he nearly passed out from using Flash so much, and it took every ounce of strength he had to drag the barely-conscious moki up cliffs and past the writhing legs and wings. Mokk was lucky a couple corruptions had given them life shards. If they hadn’t, Ori thought, he probably would have either bled to death or been killed by the poison.

It was dark when they made it to the surface, but the normal darkness of night. Glowing green eyes watched him from the spider statue.

The small group of moki seemed almost relieved when Ori emerged from the cave, panting and shouting for help. They’d set up a wall of sharpened wood stakes around the entrance, pointing inward, and breathed a sigh of relief when Ori explained that Mokk had been the one to open the gate.

“Tokk warned us it was opened,” said the leader of the group, a moki named Sullack. He’d been on the expedition searching for survivors in the Silent Woods. “We were afraid something had gotten _out_.”

“That’s what we thought, too,” said Voice. “Though there’s no guarantee he didn’t _let_ something out.”

“What kind of something?” A younger moki asked nervously. She peered down the hole, gripping her spear so hard her claws dug into it.

“Big spiders! Like the ones that bit him!” Ori answered. “He… he needs to be gotten to a healer! Fast!”

“We will, we will, don’t worry,” Sullack said. One of the other moki scampered over and felt Mokk’s pulse. Ori copied him. It was rapid and shallow, just like his breathing. Mokk flinched, and grabbed his own wrist, trying to curl into a ball again. Every muscle in his body was as tense as a tree branch bent to near the breaking point. “It looks like you should be as well.”

“Huh? The blood’s… mostly not mine.” Ori responded automatically. The words started to blur together. He was so tired he could barely stand up. “I just… fell a couple times, and got cut by spines, but… I’m okay.”

“You said you have been bitten by the spiders too?” Sullack lowered one ear skeptically. “There are old stories of great warriors meeting their doom in these hills. I heard their venom weakens the body and causes so much pain the victims can’t even fight back while they’re wrapped in webs. I don’t know if Emat and Ryn know a cure, but at least they can keep you alive and safe -”

“I’m fine!” Ori snapped. “I… I don’t know. It hurts… really, really bad, but I can heal myself a bit, so I don’t think I’ve ever been poisoned long enough. I’m just… tired.”

That was a lie. Ori hadn’t felt how bad the spiders’ venom could really get  _ yet _ , but he knew he would soon. He’d been bitten more than once trying to keep them away from Mokk. Mostly they shied away from the shield of light, but occasionally one ignored the smoke curling from its carapace and lunged. And he hadn’t healed it. Every ounce of his strength had to go to keeping the shield up so the darkness wouldn’t kill them both, and the only life shards went to trying to keep Mokk from bleeding to death. The pain kept getting worse, and worse, and worse.

But it was his fault. It was his own fault. He’d  _ known _ how much of Mokk’s bravery was an act, and that the other moki were cruel to him over it, but he’d still twisted the knife in the wound, because… wh y ?  Because h e’d tried to say his bravery wasn’t in question, but Ori needed help? But was he even wrong? Ori wouldn’t have even made it this far without the ancestral trees, without Voice by his side, without Opher and all the others, and all he’d done was let Ku get hurt, and Rall killed. Dragging Mokk back out of this underground nightmare didn’t count because he’d never have been down here in the first place if it hadn’t been for him.

“I’m sorry.” Ori rematerialized the fang, and pressed it into Mokk’s hands.

“Sorry for… what?” Mokk said weakly. The fang almost fell, but his fingers closed weakly around the cord. The moki trying to bandage his wound gave it an odd look.

“I don’t know… everything.” Ori turned away, tears welling up in his eyes. He stared into the pitch-black hole in the ground and took a deep breath. Now that he’d finally _escaped_ those nightmarish caverns, he didn’t want to go underground ever again. He wanted someone to push him over the edge, or for some _thing_ to drag him kicking and screaming into the depths, so he didn’t have to… have to do this himself. But he had to. He wasn’t coming back until he found the lost wisp.

Ori’s hands shook as he unfurled the feather. His fingers felt like they were melting into one immobile lump of flesh. The poison was spreading. But he gripped it as hard as he could, and jumped back into the living abyss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mouldwood Depths pre-Mora fight is just one of those places where no moki has any business being. What a horrible death trap! So I basically replaced Hand to Hand moki with Mokk, who still has absolutely no business being in such a dangerous place, but does have a reason for being there.
> 
> Poor Mokk! And poor Ori for that matter, because his guilt complex might actually be getting WORSE the more bad things happen. And by the way, shoutout to Echowolf31 for immediately calling this after Ori’s fight with Mokk!
> 
> There's going to be another one-week hiatus this next week for Thanksgiving, and one more for Christmas. Stay tuned!


	32. The Mad Queen

“We’re getting close,” Voice said with muted excitement. “Very close. I can feel its Light calling to me.”

“You can?” Ori tilted his head from side to side, his antennae twitching and tensing, but she was the only Light presence he could sense. “How can you feel anything through this darkness?”

“I’m not sure. I couldn’t sense the Ancestral Tree. But I suppose the wisp is another part of myself, and it’s… different. How do I put it… you can feel where your own hand is without having to look at it or search for its light, can’t you?”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t if it got… cut off. Isn’t that kind of like what happened to you?”

“I suppose. If it was _truly_ one with me, it would be much easier to find.”

“Oh.” Ori braced himself for the jump off a couple of trapped glow-beetles. He could have kept Flash active, but it was better to save his strength for the stretches of darkness where there wasn’t anything at all he could use for light. And it seemed like he could probably bounce between them quick enough to get to the ledge. He got a running start, and leaped… back… forth… he missed the ledge, and had to use the feather to get back to the second beetle. It swayed violently on the dust-choked strand of web. The darkness closed in, tearing, crushing. Ori’s chest tightened. _Now_.

He let the shield go again as soon as he made it to the patch of mushrooms. Safe. For the moment.

“Voice… I wanted to ask you something. Does it… hurt?”

“Being separated like this?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m… not sure. I don’t think it’s the same as what you would feel if your body was split into five. It feels more like something important’s been taken away, and I feel weak and powerless. Like… I suppose you could call it a pain deeper than the body. It’s very different from the feeling of the darkness here trying to destroy me.”

  
  


It was the most the Voice of the Forest had said in a while. He wasn’t sure how long. There was no sense of time down here. Ori regretted not getting some sleep when he’d returned to the surface with Mokk. He’d slept a bit, and Voice said she didn’t think it had been that long and he still felt tired, but he wasn’t sure he could trust her judgement of time when she’d existed for so long even after she was shattered, and she didn’t experience the rhythms of hunger or thirst or fatigue or even breath and heartbeat. For all he knew they could’ve been down here for days.

She was acting strange. Ori couldn’t tell if she was angry at him or not. But there was something that had been bothering him, too. Finally, he worked up the courage to ask.

“Voice?”

“Yes?” An abrupt, impatient reply. Ori winced.

“You… didn’t seem all that worried about Mokk. And...” Ori’s ears fell. The memory hurt to revisit. “When I yelled at him the other day, and you said it was the right thing...”

“I never told you that.”

“Really?” Ori tilted his head, confused. “I thought you said...”

“I only said you told him the truth, which you did. But I didn’t think he’d actually be stupid enough to… well, to come down here! And before you say anything, you didn’t _force_ him to nearly throw his life away. It was his own choice.”

“I know. I know, but… if I _hadn’t_ lost my temper, and...” Ori remembered Opher’s warning.

Voice wiggled slightly in the air. Ori hadn’t known it was possible for a creature without eyes to roll them, but she might as well have. “You know, you don’t need to blame  _ everything _ bad that happens in Niwen on yourself, Ori. If doing so makes you feel better, I won’t stop you… but please, leave me out of it. I never encouraged you to take out your anger on other creatures. You chose to do that all on your own.”

The words were like a needle piercing Ori’s heart. He felt a flash of pain, of anger, light up inside him. He clenched his fists, but… no, he was doing it again, he was doing it again! She was right, he was only angry because she was right! He tried to remember Opher’s advice. Accept the feelings, but set them aside. Let them flow past like leaves in a river. “I know.” He let out a sigh that was almost a growl. But he couldn’t just set this aside. What she said about  _ him _ was true, but… “Why are you… why are you acting like you’re angry at  _ Mokk _ all of a sudden?”

“Well, I’m a little irritated that he decided to put his own life, and both of _our_ lives, in danger for nothing but his pride.”

“Voice, he was trying to _help!_ ”

“That’s…” Voice sighed. “Ori, don’t take this the wrong way, but I think you’re a little bit naive.” Before Ori could ask if there was a _right_ way to take that, she went on. “Putting others before yourself comes so naturally to you, and that’s a very noble trait, but you can’t assume others are the same way. I think Mokk _the Brave_ is more interested in the glory and admiration he’d get than he is in actually helping. You just showed him that even the most patient creature won’t put up with his false bragging, but that only pushed him to try to accomplish something real to brag about.”

Ori really didn’t want to have this argument. Not now. He could sort of see what she meant, and that made it hard to disagree with her, but… it didn’t  _ feel _ right. He  _ knew _ Mokk wasn’t like him. Ori just felt embarrassed and u n comfortable being treated like he’d done something… special, or impossible, or heroic. Like he wasn’t just trying to survive. It was hard to understand why Mokk would  _ want _ that attention, but from what he’d said about the other moki, it seemed like he just wanted them to not treat him  _ badly,  _ like they wanted to be rid of him. “I… don’t think he meant it like that.”

“However he meant it, he didn’t _actually_ help,” she said. “You must have wasted half the night dragging him back to the surface, and who knows what harm the creatures down here could cause if he freed them by opening the gate like that.”

“Can we just… not talk about this anymore?” Ori groaned.

“You’re the one who brought it up,” Voice replied shortly. “I’m sorry… this place has been getting to me too. It’s lucky you found the ancestral tree when you did, but even with its power this darkness is a danger to us both. The sooner we return to the surface, the better.”

* * *

  
  


“I don’t like these webs...” Ori muttered nervously. “They’re a lot… stickier than the rest of this place. I think they’re fresher.” He picked his way around and through the webs gingerly, but they were _everywhere_ , catching in his fur. He tugged his way free as gently as he could. He could see the spiders crawling around, far off at the edge of his vision. Regular spiders could feel the movement of insects caught in their webs, and he was afraid if he pulled too hard he’d alert every spider there to exactly where he was. But cutting the strands, or burning them with Flash, could be just as bad.

It was eerily quiet. No trapped wings stirred in this place, only the silent shadows of the spiders. The webs hung like a jungle of thick vines, each one a potentially deadly tripwire. But there was one place where they were thickest: a solid mass of silk, like a cocoon several times larger than Ori… that was lit within by a blue glow.

“I don’t believe it...” Voice gasped.

“I know!” Ori whispered excitedly. They’d made it. After being forced to turn back in the desert, after all the perils they’d faced in these nightmarish caves, they’d finally found one of the missing pieces. “I can feel it too now.” He tiptoed closer to the ensnared light. “Do you think I should cut it free, and then run?”

“No. I think I can break free. But these webs are a binding, a prison… something trapped the wisp here intentionally. When I break the webs, be prepared for the worst.”

Ori nodded. He kept a watchful eye on the spiders as they scuttled along the web strands. They were massing, gathering… but they weren’t attacking. It was like they were waiting for something, or afraid of something.

Then he felt the webs tremble under a great weight. He turned around, and his breath almost left his body. The darkness, the terrible crushing darkness, was  _ here _ , but it wasn’t shapeless and coming from everywhere at once anymore. It had a physical form, the thing at the heart of the evil presence in the caves. And its true form was almost scarier than the darkness. The darkness he could hold off now. But  _ this? _

The biggest spider Ori had ever seen lunged from the gloom, leaping over the webs binding the lost wisp and swiping at Voice. She narrowly avoided its pinchers and fled back to Ori’s side, her aura buzzing with fear. This was nothing like the Decay-Spiders he’d faced before, or even the smaller Darkspiders. It radiated an intense malevolent,  _ dark _ power – masked and corrupted and twisted by the Decay, but it was so  _ strong _ , as strong as Kuro’s or Shriek’s. The thing was nearly the size of Kwolok, and eight rheumy, mildewed eyes as big as Ori’s head fixed him with an unblinking, sickly green glare. Pulsating, wormlike fungoid growths of Decay that glowed with the same unnatural light covered its body.

Ori was prepared for the worst. But not for this. Not… he’d come down here to try to avoid Shriek for as long as he could, but this was hardly any better. Just being  _ near _ it was overwhelming. He backed away, his heart in his throat. There was no way he could beat this monster. He just had to stay alive, and keep it distracted long enough for Voice to break the wisp free.

But he didn’t even get the chance to tell her the plan. The spider lunged again, screeching and spitting acrid, stinging venom. Ori ducked and covered his eyes with his arms, but sharp, burning spots of pain lit up all over his body. Just breathing the vapor burned his lungs and nose, and his eyes hurt so much he could barely make himself keep them open. He squinted through a haze of tears, and saw it leap at him just in time. He jumped back with a yelp of terror. The webs caught his hooves, and he tumbled to the ground. It was soft and springy, but it was sticky, catching his fur. He couldn’t get up!

As Ori wrenched himself free of the webs, the monstrous spider struck again. Its pinchers stabbed at the ground, ripping and tearing through the tough silk like it was just a leaf. It gave way, and for a moment Ori was hanging upside-down by his ankle before his kick tore through the last line holding him, and he plummeted into a pitch-black abyss, the eight eyes glaring above him.

More webs broke his fall. The first few were thin, and broke under his weight, but a stronger one caught him, ensnaring him like a firefly caught in a normal spiderweb. He struggled, kicking and clawing with all his strength. Some strands broke, but he just touched others, and he ended up even more tangled in the sticky silk. He could barely move. The Darkspiders were coming, scuttling down the wall and along the strands binding him. After experiencing what their bite could do if he didn’t use the regeneration ability to get rid of the venom, he’d gained a new fear of them, and he was trapped, helpless, about to be swarmed and torn apart!

Flash saved him – Flash, and strength born from panic. It didn’t burn through the webs fast enough, but it held off the spiders a crucial moment, until he was able to tear a hand free and summon Spirit Edge. He hacked blindly at anything he could reach, cutting apart webs and limbs like, until they too gave way and he fell painfully to the rocky ground.

“Ori! Are you all right?” Voice asked.

“I don’t… I don’t know!” Ori’s eyes and ears were still stinging. He almost made the mistake of rubbing them with hands that were still damp with more venom. Just in time, he remembered and used the healing power instead, but his throat still felt like he’d come close to drowning. He doubled over coughing, and was surprised when no blood came out. “We have to… we have to get back up there! I’ll try to… distract it… you get your eyes free… and we run!”

He glanced back up the shaft he’d fallen into, hoping there were good footholds to climb back up. There weren’t. Just overhangs, webs, and a cluster of glowing eyes making their way down towards him, descending on a line of silk as thick as a vine.

“Or not!” Ori squeaked. He dived behind a tangle of rotted tree roots that had somehow made it down here. Keep breathing… just keep breathing! The spider jumped the last bit of distance, landing with a crash that made rocks fall from the ceiling of the cave. It was upon him almost instantly, swatting aside the roots and sending them tumbling into a pool of bubbling grey-green liquid. It sizzled and smoked.

The spider struck at the ground again. Ori jumped just in time to avoid a wave of ghostly white fire. Okay… it was like the Hornbug. He couldn’t underestimate its speed, but if he kept out of its reach and waited for it to charge, and kept striking at its joints and abdomen…

The next thing he knew, he on the ground, his vision split in two and his head spinning. That pounce… so fast… he felt like the blow had torn him in half, his chest and stomach hurt so much.

“Ori, get up! Get up!” Voice cried. Ori couldn’t respond. He couldn’t take a breath, let alone speak. His chest and stomach hurt so much… he dragged himself to his feet, clinging to the wall he’d been swatted into for support… it was funny, it looked like it had even _more_ eyes and legs now, coming towards him…

Coming towards him. That was bad. Ori rolled under another strike, slashing at the spider’s joints with Spirit Edge and springing away. It didn’t feel like there was much resistance… had he really cut through? Was it that easy? No, it didn’t look hurt at all, and the blade was wavering, see-through in places. Another try confirmed it. It wasn’t doing  _ nothing _ , but it was close to it. The monster’s incredible power was dousing the flames of its blade, ripping them apart as soon as it touched its shell. Spirit Smash glanced harmlessly of the curve of its abdomen, pulling Ori off balance. He stumbled, and the spider whirled around, kicking him almost into the bubbling liquid. He knew touching that would be like the tarpits in the Silent Woods. No second chances.

It was so fast, so fast and vicious Ori hardly had a chance to get his breath back. It didn’t seem to be able to reach him as easily if he climbed up onto the walls, but if he lingered up there it would just climb after him. He thought that would give him a chance to jump away over its head, but it just leaped after him. But it was attacking wildly, half the time just stabbing at the ground where he’d been.

He shot an arrow at its eye. It screeched and recoiled, clawing at the injury, but it still didn’t seem like he’d really hurt it. But that gave him an idea. Could it even see him? Or was it like the leaping mortar worms, just listening for the noise of his footsteps through the ground? Maybe he’d be safe in the air. He scampered up the wall again and leaped off, unfurling the feather. It could predict that, but if he changed directions…

Something hit him in the back that felt like a ball of fire, knocking him from the sky and driving a cry of pain from lungs that were hardly even working. It hurt so much, so much he couldn’t even stand up, it was like his back was  _ melting! _ He had to heal… had to heal… just keep running, heal when he got a chance… but there had to be skin missing, ribs shattered. He couldn’t heal something like this all at once. He was standing up, and running, and slashing wildly at its face when it came near him, but he didn’t know how.

There was only one thing he hadn’t tried yet, at least that was worth trying. The spear. He hadn’t gotten a chance to practice it much down here. There was no point: it would kill a  c orruption instantly, but so would Spirit Smash usually, and he couldn’t afford to waste that much energy. But if ever there was a time to use it, it was now. He couldn’t keep this up.

The tip of one of the False Lanternflowers was caught in a web swinging overhead. Ori grabbed onto it and pulled himself up, soaring high into the air. The blank green eyes followed him, but before it could do whatever it had done before to shoot him down, Ori formed the new weapon Opher had shown him. It was like a lightning bolt frozen in place, a blazing shaft of energy, and when it left his arm it seemed to double in speed by tearing itself apart. It didn’t strike where Ori was trying for, right where the spider’s abdomen met its head, but it did hit its abdomen. There was a brilliant flash of blue light. The spider let out a screech that almost sounded  _ pained _ , or even frightened. It recoiled, thrashing wildly, and nearly collapsed the ceiling on itself. But Ori collapsed too when he landed. The arm he’d thrown it with ached, and his entire body felt weak, heavy, and overheated. He just wanted to curl into a ball and sleep… or at least scream in pain, he couldn’t possibly sleep like this.

He’d finally hurt it. The spot where he’d hit was smoking, and some of the growths had been torn of f its back and were leaking some kind of fluid. But it wasn’t dead. It wasn’t even limping.

It was too much… it was too strong… he was going to die…

“Ori, _run!_ ” Voice shouted in his ear. “Up this way, quickly!”

The rubble. The fallen rubble had opened up another path. Ori ran for his life, springing up the rocks and fallen logs and practically forcing himself through webs and spikes as the immense spider tore apart the path behind him. He felt like his body would give way any second, but there was a faint light up ahead, above him. He tumbled out of a hollow tree trunk and crashed to the ground. He could barely stand up anymore. He stumbled forward, leaving a trail of blood on the silvery webs behind him. But there it was! He’d made it back to the cavern where he’d started! It was so close!

There was a furious screech from somewhere below. The silk vibrated underfoot and hummed with its power. Several smaller spiders dropped from the ceiling, encircling the trapped wisp. No! They were so close! He didn’t have the breath to scream at Voice to get free now, he just flung himself at the arachnids, swinging his blade without carrying if he hit stone or web or flesh. One spider was rent open, smoke pouring from its abdomen as it rolled onto its back, legs curling. Another scuttled back with two legs missing. Blow after blow parted the tough webbing, but it was like hacking through a tangle of thick, woody vines.

And it wasn’t enough… he wasn’t fast enough… the gigantic spider tore back into the clearing, and raised its front legs to the sky just like the statue that guarded the entrance to the caves. It screamed again, an unearthly howling, hissing wail of black, icy death that made Ori want to tear his own ears off.

Darkness fell like a smothering cloud of volcanic ash. Ori forced what was left of his power out into a shield, but he could barely form it at all, and it was so tiny, barely arm’s length. He couldn’t make himself run, just wait for it to attack and dive aside with as little energy as he could. He slashed and hammered at its limbs and face, but the blows were weak, and sloppy. Holding back the darkness was like trying to hold up a mountain. The shield got smaller, and smaller, and finally it just broke. Ori’s eyes rolled back in his head, and he felt himself falling, but he never hit the ground.

The dim light of the firefly-lit cave where he’d put the Soul Link dazzled him. It took a while for him to even figure out which way was up. 

“I’m sorry!” Ori sobbed. “I couldn’t… it’s too strong! I can’t do it!”

“You were… you were close.” Voice’s light was so weak, and waves of fear and pain radiated from her. “You’ve wounded it, at least.”

“Barely… Voice, it… it almost killed you, didn’t it?”

She hesitated. “It’s weakened me badly. I think I can survive it overpowering us one more time… but I’m not sure after that. Next time… I hate having to ask you this, but if the shield is about to go out… well, the faster I’m pulled back here, the less chance it has to attack me...”

“Next time?” Ori was still hyperventilating. He could still almost feel the venom coursing through his veins. “No – Voice, you can’t die, I don’t want – I don’t want you to die! We can’t go back there, we have to -”

“Ori!” she shouted. Ori flinched at her harsh tone. “Listen to me,” she said, more gently but still firmly. Ori knew she meant listen and don’t argue. “The wisp is vulnerable too. It’s been suffering under this terrible darkness, just like that Ancestral Tree, and its Light – my light – won’t last long if that… monstrous being turns its full attention on it. We _can’t_ turn back anymore. I can’t turn back!”

Ori struggled to his feet, trembling under the weight of her words. “You’re… you’re sure about this? You… like you said, you won’t come back.”

“Yes. Ori, I… I don’t want to face it again either. But as I told you, in this state I am slowly dying. I’m willing to take this risk – any risk, any cost – if that’s what I have to do to survive.”

Ori nodded silently. Those words were so familiar it was almost uncanny. This was… this was what he and Sein had both faced on Mount Horu’s burning slopes. That was what he’d told himself when he stepped through those gates, knowing he might never come out. It was what he’d told himself when he sat slumped against a wall, his fur still smoking, after a close call when lava had buried the Soul Link and he’d been so close to it just being  _ over _ .

“Okay,” he said softly. “Just promise me… just promise me you’ll stay alive. I don’t… I don’t know what I’ll do if I wake up here alone.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


The spiders were still there, waiting for him. The smaller ones were wrapping new webs around the entrapped wisp. The giant was waiting on the wall behind where Ori came in, and if it wasn’t for Voice’s quick warning he would have been hit in the back with a stream of skin-melting venom again. It was almost like it  _ knew _ he’d be back. But that was imposs – no. It wasn’t. He’d traversed the deep darkness again getting to this place. He’d touched  _ its _ darkness, and held it back, but… it  _ knew _ he was coming. Decayed or not, there was still a ruthless, calculating intelligence like the thing that had attacked him at the top of the Wellspring.

Ori tried the original plan – distract the spider while Voice tried to break the wisp free, then run. But it… he guessed it was doing the same thing he was, forcing its aura out around it in a sort of thick mass. But instead of his little bubble of light, it plunged the entire cave into inky blackness. Voice was forced to retreat to the small bubble of safety, staying close to Ori, and he was forced back further and further from the wisp.

All he could do was keep fighting, keep running and dodging and hitting back, and keep staying alive until he couldn’t. He’d gotten a couple of energy crystals, but they just weren’t enough. He knew he couldn’t keep the darkness away from him… away from Voice… much longer. With a furious scream he flung himself at the spider’s waiting mandibles, slashing wildly at anything he could reach and pouring every bit of strength he had left into scouring its cloudy eyes with Spirit Flame, until the venom-dripping jaws found their target.

Over and over, he threw himself into hell. The smaller spiders had started trying to block off the entrance to the cavern with stones and webs, but Spirit Smash broke through the barrier. They stopped after a couple of tries, but then Ori found them waiting for him at the Soul Link, and had to fight for his life before he’d even gotten his bearings. He struggled to the cavern with blood dripping down his leg and poison setting his nerves on fire. He had to be  _ fast _ . There was no time to wait for the phantom pains to go away, no time to wait for his breathing to slow back down.

But every time, he did a little more damage to the spider. Even the incredible power of  the Lightspike glanced off if he didn’t hit it at the right angle, and it was too easy to miss with, but the other weapons were doing  _ something _ . When the spider summoned the darkness, it seemed like there was less power just tearing Ori’s weapons apart. And every time, he got a little better at using the spider’s own power against it, reflecting the balls of venom back at it just like it was one of the weak, easy-to-kill ones that had plagued Spider Coves. And every time the venom splattered across its carapace, or the Spirit Edge’s blade glanced off, more and more of the pulsating, tumorous growths covering its body were severed.

Ori couldn’t stop crying. The pain and exhaustion were endless now. It all blurred together… one blow, one reflection after another, dancing around the spider, springing back and forth in midair and slashing at it… one moment of distraction messed up his timing, and he couldn’t heal the wound with Flash active, he just had to try to keep fighting with his eyes burning, his throat burning, his lungs burning. Nausea, retching, he hadn’t eaten in so long that nothing was even coming up but stomach acid and blood. Another death, another. Trying to crawl away, trying to kick at the spider with a leg that wasn’t there anymore while it advanced on him with blood dripping from its mandibles, trying to just keep the shield of light burning long enough to die. He’d remembered a Spirit Shard he’d found but Twillen’s description sounded too dangerous to ever use. It could let him keep using his powers when he should have been too exhausted to even stand up, but it tore his body apart in the process.

But then  _ something _ gave way. Something that wasn’t him. Ori wasn’t actually sure what he’d finally hit it with, but the spider recoiled, thrashing violently, slamming itself against the wall with earsplitting squeals. And, suddenly, it collapsed. The darkness that had fallen over the cavern lifted. It was still dark, but Ori’s light, and Voice’s, penetrated the gloom like they should. And so did the trapped wisp.

Ori breathed a trembling sigh of relief. Tears dripped down his face as he let the shield of light break apart and staggered towards where it lay tangled in silk. Slowly, its light, and Voice’s, brightened. The webs smoked, and burned, and finally a second orb of blue light rose uncertainly from within them. They circled each other, closer and closer, and met in a blinding flash that for just one moment illuminated the whole cavern.

“Uh oh...” Ori muttered. There were still at least a dozen spiders clinging to the walls, probably more. But they weren’t attacking. They were almost… cowering.

The aura of Decay was gone. Ori could feel  _ emotion _ in their auras. Fear, grief, joy, such a conflicting tangle it made him want to scream. How was that… how was that possible? They were Decayed! Corrupted! Pupilless eyes watched him from the darkness. He could hear quiet, hissing voices.

“Spirit?”

“The Light is free!”

“Where am I?”

“Mother?”

  
  


_ Mother _ .

  
  


Ori’s last shreds of strength vanished when he turned, and saw one of the little spiders nudging the giant… like it was trying to get her to wake up.

“Voice?” he whispered, his own voice quavering. “What is this? What did I… what did I _do?”_

“I don’t know.” Voice sounded just as horrified as he did. “I don’t understand… at least, you didn’t kill her...”

Ori realized she was right. The spider wasn’t breathing, but… no, wait,  _ did _ spiders breathe? But the dark aura was as strong as ever – no, stronger. It just wasn’t trying to tear him apart anymore. The growths, and the fog over its eyes, were all gone. Now they were pure black, like spheres of polished volcanic glass. Ori could see his own light, and his own distorted image, reflected in them. The creature slowly rose to its feet.

“Which is more than can be said for the others,” Voice finished. “We’d better leave.”

Ori looked around. The cave had become a battlefield, littered with the broken corpses of dozens of spiders. The living poked and prodded at the twitching bodies. They hadn’t turned to ash like true Corruptions. But… but… everything was numb. His head was spinning. But the memory of Kuro’s eyes flashing a hate-filled white told him Voice was right. He had to run.

“ _Stop, Spirit._ ”

The power of the voice froze Ori in his tracks. The air ripple d around him, and the hissing whisper that was somehow so loud it hurt his ears reverberated off the walls. He was terrified, but he  _ couldn’t _ disobey. His light dimmed around him until he could only see his paws in front of his face. He turned back. There was nothing but his light, reflected in dozens, hundreds of spider eyes in the darkness.

“I’m sorry!” Ori stammered. “I’m so sorry! I thought – I -”

“I think I’d better handle this,” said Voice. “We meant you and your people no harm. We believed – I believed – that the Decay had claimed you, and you were beyond help. Please forgive us… I mistook you for mere denizens of these caverns. My memories are lost, in the snow and ice of Baur’s Reach, and I did not recognize you. But I think I know who you are now… Mora.”

For a long time, the spider gave no sign of reaction. The tension in the air threatened to rip Ori’s fur out. Then she bowed her body slightly. “Yes… I am Mora, Mother of Spiders. But you are right… I  _ was _ lost to the Decay, until its hold was broken. I… I am saddened beyond words to see what has happened… but I must thank you… Spirit.”

“Thank you?” Ori repeated, stunned. He knelt there trembling, expecting to be killed at any moment. “I… I don’t understand. How can you… how can you thank me?”

Mora sighed without breath. She spoke physically and in Ori’s mind in unison. “Believe me, it is not easy, Spirit. It is not easy to thank you when my children have perished by your blade, and you come here wielding the same power that was used to attack us before. But you have freed me from the corruption that clouded my mind. I owe you my life, and every life that was not lost.”

“Before?” Ori winced, remembering the fragments of the ancient spirit’s battle he’d seen. “I learned it from an Ancestral Tree. It seemed like… like you _weren’t_ Decayed when he was fighting you before. What happened?”

The Spider Queen hesitated for a long time. Her emotions were mostly restrained now, but Ori thought he felt a hint of unease. But he couldn’t read her expressions to confirm it. “I made a terrible mistake,” she finally said. “I, and  _ others. _ When the Light shattered, I believed, in my arrogance, that it was best to let it go out. I believed I could hold the Decay off  by  myself, and in time my web could spread beyond Mouldwood to the rest of Niwen. So we retreated into the caverns and sealed ourselves away, leaving those above to fend for themselves. I held the fallen wisp prisoner… and killed the spirits who tried to claim it. But I was foolish. We all need the Light to provide balance. Even those of us beneath the surface. The Decay overpowered me and my children and corrupted us, turning us into little more than puppets that tore our home apart. I cared for nothing… not even my own children… no better than what I sought to destroy.”

Ori, too, was slow to respond. It took time for the words to sink in. Had Mora been like Kuro? But Kuro hadn’t just attacked out of nowhere. There’d been a reason… “Why… why did you want it to go out?” he asked nervously. “Tokk said you were one of the… the guardians of Niwen, like Kwolok. Didn’t you help protect the Light?”

“In a sense. My Darkness, too, is a part of nature’s balance, and I preserved it in my own way. What about you, Lightbearer? Why have _you_ come here? And why now, after such a long time?”

The words themselves reminded Ori uncomfortably of the Kii, but their tone wasn’t aggressive, only curious. Still, he flattened his ears defensively and took a step back. He tried to remember Opher’s exercises, but how was he supposed to let go of the same feelings he was trying to talk about?

“You are not the Willow’s kin, yet you carry her Light,” Mora continued. Her pedipalps waved slowly in the air.

Ori explained what had happened, as briefly as he could. The flight from Nibel, the fateful storm, the desperate search, and Shriek’s attack. The more of the story he told, though, the more horrified Mora became.

“The Owls… have perished?” she repeated, sadness billowing from her. “And the Gorleks?”

Ori nodded sadly.

“So it is worse than I feared...” the great spider whispered. “I cannot believe I was lost for so long.”

Several of the smaller spiders came scuttling into the chamber, carrying what looked like small bundles of silk. A few they gave to some of their kin who were wounded, but still alive. But there weren’t many. They laid most of the bundles at Mora’s feet.

“What… what are those?” Ori asked.

“These are Pitchmold crystals,” she explained. “They grow in the deepest parts of the caverns. They were abundant once, but Decay has destroyed most of them. These are all that we can spare, but it is the least I can do for… for letting so many suffer like this. They should help heal the young owlet’s body, but I cannot say if they will be enough.”

Tears broke free of Ori’s eyes and streamed down his face. “Thank you…” he whispered. “Thank you so much...” He almost wanted to hug Mora’s tree-sized, chitinous foreleg the same way her offspring had done, but the raw strength she radiated was too intimidating for him to get any closer. Even though it wasn’t hostile anymore, it was so intense it was giving him a headache. He could tell that being freed from the Decay’s influence had only strengthened her. If she turned the deep, hungry darkness against him now, even the Flash ability wouldn’t buy him much time. But there was a way… there was a way after all! It felt like a mountain had been lifted off his shoulders.

But Mora set that weight right back down. “I must warn you: they cannot destroy the Decay completely. We have learned that the hard way. As long as the land suffers, the infection will keep coming back.”

“Does that mean… does that mean it’ll come back in you, too?” Ori asked.

The smaller spider s shuddered. They huddled close to Mora, some crawling onto her back. “Mother… it won’t come back, will it?” asked one. “I can’t remember anything… nothing but pain and fear...”

“I do not know, little ones,” said Mora. Ori got the impression that she was addressing him as well. “I want to say it can be fought off for good if we, and your friend, stay strong, but I have been wrong before. I am afraid the only true cure lies in restoring Niwen’s Light. It is a terrible burden to place on one as young as yourself… but you must find the wisps. For all of our sake, you must right what is wrong, and heal this wounded land. Be strong, Spirit… and good luck.” She sighed. Her featureless eyes didn’t move, but she tilted her body slightly, and Ori had a feeling she was glancing towards the way out. “Now you should go.” Her whisper was quieter than before. “We all need the Light, but this is not a place for you. Return to the surface… and leave us to mourn our losses.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usually with the boss fights / escape sequences I figure out a way to make there be genuinely life-or-death stakes for Ori failing, which I did still do to some extent here… but I wanted to give Ori one “Dormammu, I’ve come to bargain” moment, and here it is! Although this veered more into “Attack of the Dead Spirits” territory. Uhhh... 
> 
> Mouldwood Depths - then - and again,  
> Attacking the - dark - for Niwen,  
> Facing your - death - once again,  
> For Niwen, charge again, die again!
> 
> ...I'm sorry, I had to.
> 
> Fun Trivia Fact: Mora is the only character in the Ori series who canonically has children and survives to the end without dying or being reduced to a near-death state at least once. Unless you count being corrupted or being knocked out by Ori. This series isn't kind to parents.  
> On a more serious note, I changed Mora’s character and dialogue quite a bit – her canon lines were kind of repeating things Kwolok’s already said anyway.
> 
> So, that's one wisp down, three to go! Ori's been through hell, but he's finally made real, tangible progress! And from the deepest darkness came an unexpected ray of hope! Finally Ori's caught a break on something!
> 
> Also I found out that the spiderlings' "death animations" were actually burrowing underground, which I somehow missed when playing the game, after I'd already written this chapter. I decided to leave it like this not just for the trauma points, but because I already established that the spirit weapons can be extremely dangerous even to other spirits. For the spiderlings to then be surviving them they would have had to extremely strong and durable compared to everything else.


	33. The Darkness Lifted

Ori waited and watched with bated breath as the moki healers ground the precious Pitchmold crystals into a fine powder. It was dark in the sheltered hollow, and they worked by his and Voice’s light, and a couple of candles, but the powder reflected none of it. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected the crystals to be like, but he hadn’t expected them to be like shelf fungi turned to smooth, faceted stone. They were already jet black when whole, but ground up, they were like shadows made solid. The scent of them made Ori’s fur stand on end, and he was glad the spiders had wrapped them in silk, because they couldn’t possibly be pleasant to touch.

“I haven’t seen these in many years,” Ryn said. “They used to grow in parts of the woods, back in the day.”

“Why do you have to grind them up?” asked Ori.

“I don’t know if we _have_ to, for her. We moki can’t just absorb the power of a life shard the way you can. I was taught to make the patient break pieces off and chew on them, but since Ku is unconscious, she can’t do that.”

“Wouldn’t be easy with a beak anyway, I’d think,” commented Emat.

“In any case, it’s more effective to grind it into a powder, mix it into water, and make the patient drink it in one gulp,” said Ryn.

“Why is that?” mumbled a voice from the other side of the hollow. Mokk had been woken up by the commotion and Ori’s light. Half-woken, anyway. He’d slipped in and out of consciousness a couple times, and he still looked terrible. His fur was messed up and his eyes were bleary and sunken, but his wounds had been bandaged and his leg was in a splint. And after the state he’d been in, Ori was just glad to see him alive.

The older moki smiled slyly. “The way these taste, if you tell a moki to chew on a crystal they’ll usually spit it out when you’re not looking… just like you with the roots I told you to take to stop the bites from swelling.”

Mokk stuck out his tongue and ran it against his teeth like he was trying to get rid of a bad taste. “I thought they’d gone bad...”

Soon the mixture of Pitchmold, water, and a few salt crystals the moki added was finished. It looked almost like ink, but with none of the shininess. The smell almost made Ori gag. He wasn’t sure how to even describe it, like… damp and dark caves, unearthed tree roots, and a sharp scent that was unmistakably herbal yet like nothing he knew. It seemed so unnatural. The healing plants he was familiar with had a strong bitter scent that wasn’t exactly appetizing, but they didn’t smell  _ bad _ like this did. But perhaps to a creature of darkness it didn’t. It was life to Ku, but probably deadly poison to him.

“If nothing else, this will help her hold out against the decay longer,” said Ryn. She plucked what looked like a large sewing needle connected to a wrinkled bag of something like fabric, but smoother, from a basket of tools, and with a pair of tweezers held the needle over the candle flame, moving it slowly back and forth.

“What’s… what’s that for?” Ori asked nervously.

“She can’t swallow,” Emat explained. “If we tried to make her drink it, she could choke. This is the stinger and venom sac from a giant pond scorpion. It’s hollow, see?”

Ori’s chest tightened as he realized how the device worked. He didn’t want to watch this… he didn’t want to watch this… but he couldn’t leave Ku’s side. They said they’d given her water like this, but it was still frightening.

The two moki carefully rolled Ku onto her side, and Ryn parted the feathers on her shoulder. She guided the needle into place – after running some water through it - and Ori saw the slight jerk as Ku’s skin gave way. He winced, expecting her to cry out in pain, but there was no response. Emat poured the small cup of black liquid into the venom sac with a funnel made from half of a hollowed-out gourd, then added more water until it dripped out. Ryn immediately pinched the narrow top opening between two finger s , and gently squeezed it.

At first, nothing happened. Ori wasn’t sure if he was just imagining Ku’s breathing getting a little faster, or the slight, almost imperceptible twitch of her eyelids. It wasn’t until the third dose forced under her skin that it happened. The little owlet stirred – only her head and wings, nothing lower than that – and her eyes suddenly snapped open.

“Huh – what – help! Ori, _help!_ ” Ku’s head jerked wildly from side to side. A flash of gut-wrenching terror ripped through Ori like a gust of wind through tree branches in autumn. The moki’s candles went out. She tried to rise, frantically beating her wings against the stump and scattering the grass bedding. Ori, Ryn, and Emat all rushed to hold her down.

“Ku! Ku, it’s all right! It’s okay! You’re safe!” Ori fought the instincts telling him to stop pinning the struggling owlet down, the instincts telling him he was hurting her.

“...Ori?” Ku’s eyes widened in recognition, then immediately were screwed shut in pain. She slumped back down with a whimper, her chest heaving in and out. “Owww… what happened – where is – what’s happening, why can’t I move?”

“It’s going to be okay, it’s just… I promise you, it’s going to be okay!” Promise? Like he’d promised he’d keep her safe? Why should she trust _him?_

“You have to keep still!” Ryn said in a soothing but firm tone. “Or you’ll hurt yourself worse!”

“But – Shriek -”

“She’s gone, Ku. She’s… not going to hurt you here. You’re safe.”

“Oh.” Ku was panting, her eyes shimmering with tears. Ori realized he was crying too. “But you were - why were you so scared?”

“I… they had to hurt you a little to make you better. It just… scared me is all.”

“Oh…” Ku stared at the healers, and pressed her head down like she was trying to sink it through her shoulders. “What did they do?” she asked, her voice quavering. “Ori – I can’t move, what’s wrong with me?”

Ori didn’t know how to explain it to her. He didn’t if he should – he had to tell her  _ something _ , but how much – and  _ how? _ He couldn’t bring himself to tell her that… that she was  _ dying _ ! He just stood there, his mouth dry and his tongue glued into place, for what felt like the whole night while the three moki there exchanged nervous glances.

“Ori?” Voice asked. “Do you need me to… explain the situation?”

Ori shook his head. No – this should be  _ his _ job, he was her brother, he should be brave enough to tell her the bad news! But his lips wouldn’t move, until he finally gave up and hung his head in shame. “Yes...”

But Voice did exactly what Ori was afraid of doing. She just blurted out the horrifying facts – not cold and detached, but she just  _ said _ her back was broken and if they couldn’t fix it she’d never walk or fly again and she was sick and dying and -

Ku’s eyes widened so much they seemed in danger of bursting out of her skull. Her beak hung open in shock. Ori must have been staring at the orb of light in shock and disbelief too, because the one thing she asked was: “Is… is it true?”

And all Ori could do was nod sadly.

And then… Ku just  _ broke.  _ At first she was just crying, her breathing getting faster and faster, until she threw her head back and  _ screamed. _ She thrashed from side to side so violently Ori was scared she’d break her neck, and slammed her wings against the stump under her, and tried to bite Ryn and Emat when they got near her, and waves of pure anguish and fear and  _ rage _ battered Ori like he was getting tossed about in the storm. It wasn’t like being near Shriek or Kuro, but in a way it was  _ worse _ because he understood the feelings tearing at him and trying to push him  _ away _ , and there was no way he could possibly try to block them out, he couldn’t even bring himself to try. And Ori wanted to do the same thing, he was fighting to stop himself from just screaming his lungs out too, but he had to try to stay calm for her, and – and if it was like last time, would it  _ hurt _ her? He couldn’t even tell if the power she gave off was hurting him.

The screams turned into choking, hiccuping sobs. Ori hugged Ku as best he could, and she tried to wrap her wings around him, and fur and feathers became damp with tears. For a long time, they just lay there, clinging to each other.

“Ori? Am I going to… to turn into stone, like the other owls?”

“Not if I can help it,” Ori whispered. “I’m going to… I’m going to find a way to fix this, okay? Voice said she might know a way to help you, if we can get her memories back, and put her back together, and… I’m not giving up.”

“Okay...” Ku said weakly. “Um… Ori?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you ever get… hurt like this?”

Ori sighed, and nodded. How else would he even explain it that wouldn’t make it sound worse? He hadn’t ever had to endure the pain, and the terrifying immobility, of a broken back for very long. Not as long as Ku would have to, if it took as long to find the other missing pieces as it had to find this one. His stomach lurched as he remembered trying to crawl away from approaching swarms of corruptions, sobbing in terror. And Leru had died like that, huddled in a damp, lonely cave, doubled over in pain. “A… a couple times,” he said. “I know it’s scary, and it… really, really hurts.” He couldn’t even find words to describe it. There were times when he remembered not being able to move or feel parts of his body, and they didn’t  _ hurt  _ all the time, but something else always did, and the feeling of touching something that he knew should be part of him, but only feeling it one way, like it was foreign, and seeing a limb flop around dead and lifeless, was horrible. “But it’s… it’s not going to be like this forever,” he said. “And you’re safe here. Nothing else is going to hurt you, I promise.”

  
  


Then Voice said a muted: “Oh, no.”

“What?” Ori looked up. “Is something wro -” he stopped, his breath catching in his throat.

The white flowers were starting to bloom again.

Ori felt the calming, soothing energy wash over his battered, tired body, but Ku tensed, her aura buzzing with fear.

“Ori? What’s happening?”

“Ku, it’s okay! It’s – I think it’s going to hurt, but – it’s going to be all right!” He was ready to explain, but the light was getting brighter and brighter.

“It’s like what the Moki did,” Voice said calmly. “It will probably hurt a bit, but it won’t last very long, and it will help heal you in the end.”

“No!” Ku looked around frantically, wild-eyed. “This is wrong, this – it hurts! It’s burning!”

“I know – I know it hurts!” Ori tried to reassure her. “Just – hold still, and – it’ll be fine!”

“Try to think of something else to take your mind off it,” said Ryn. “If you have a favorite song or poem you could say the words to yourself, or try to count in your head.”

Ku’s chest fluttered in and out. She screwed her eyes shut, thrashing her head from side to side. It seemed like she was whispering something, but as the Light grew stronger, and Ori’s eyelids grew heavy, hers snapped open again. “I can’t!” she cried. “I can’t – I can’t do it! Make it stop make it – make it I can’t -”

Her next breath came out as a wordless scream that almost tore Ori’s heart out. She was trying to get up, trying to get away, to fly. Ori tried to hold her down, afraid she would hurt herself, but that only made her struggle more violently.

“No! Get – away! Don’t!” Before Ori could react, Ku lunged, sinking her beak into his arm. He yelped and jumped back, tearing himself free, and Ryn and Emat couldn’t get close either. Thin wisps of smoke rose into the air, fanned by her violently beating wings. She toppled off the stump and ended up lying among the white flowers. The light finally faded, but Ku was still coughing and sobbing breathlessly.

“Ku! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Ori rushed to her side, ignoring the fresh, bleeding wound. He tensed and hesitated before touching her. Would she bite him again? Was she afraid of _him?_ She recoiled at first, eyes wide, but then their eyes met and she pressed herself against him as best she could.

“It was… burning, it was burning!” She choked out. “It was just like in… in all the bad dreams!”

“The dreams?”

She nodded. “All the dreams, where… where the Light’s coming, and I can’t fly or run or get away and it just… it just… burns me!” She tearfully explained the nightmares she’d been having. Ori was stunned, speechless. She’d never said anything. She’d been dreaming about her siblings’ death for so long and he’d never known? “Don’t… don’t let it hurt me again… please...”

“I’m sorry, Ku… I can’t.” Ori swallowed hard, his throat sore – more out of sympathy from the hoarseness in Ku’s voice than anything else. He looked down at his wrist. The fur was wet with blood and slicked down, and it still stung, but Voice’s light had closed the wound. “This is… to keep you from turning to stone.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” added Voice. “I am truly sorry, little one. The Creeping Stone can spread very quickly in a weakened creature. It has already been four days, and we still have a long way to go. You would probably be dead by now if I hadn’t done it. And… I didn’t expect Ori to find a way of waking you before we were able to cure the infection.”

Four days… it had been four days since she’d been hurt. Four days, and he’d only just found  _ one _ of the missing wisps. How many more times would Ku have to endure this? How many times could she even  _ survive? _ Just once was far too many. “I… I should get moving,” he said. “The sooner I find the other pieces -”

“What? No! Don’t leave, don’t leave!” Ku propped herself up, her wings trembling from the effort. Her voice was close to falling back into panic. “Please!”

“Ku, I’m sorry, but – but I have to, to – to make you better as fast as I can.”

“Ori...” Voice groaned. “It’s been four nights since she was hurt. Remind me, how much have you slept?”

“What? I slept plenty last night!” Ori protested. “In the Glades, remember?”

“Yes, I do remember, and it was _two_ nights ago.”

“...Oh.” Ori rubbed his eyes. No, she was right, it was two nights, he’d just lost track of time in the total darkness. It had been dark again when he’d come back out of the caves. It must have been almost two days since he’d seen the sun.

“You know, Ori, even though my Eyes have been restored, I can still only see the _outside_ of you, and I’d rather keep it that way.”

Ori winced, and glared knives at Voice. “All  _ right _ , I already understood you!” he snapped. Truth be told he didn’t want to leave Ku alone just yet, and the entire journey up from the Depths and back to Kwolok’s hollow every step he’d taken without collapsing was a welcome surprise.

He almost dozed off while the moki healers were checking on Ku, seeing if it seemed like her head was still hurt and if her back had healed at all or something like that. But he kept being jolted awake until they put the candles out and returned to their hut nearby. He curled up next to Ku on the platform. Her warmth and her breathing and heartbeat next to him immediately calmed his nerves. Just like home, he thought.

“I missed you...” Ku mumbled.

“I missed you too, Ku. You… you really scared me.”

“Good thing Naru isn’t here...”

Ori stifled a laugh. “Yeah. She’d be worried sick if she knew about… all of this.” He knew neither of them meant it. He wanted so badly to be able to turn to her for guidance and comfort, and he knew she must have been worried sick not knowing what had happened to them. “I’ll have to leave tomorrow, to find the other wisps. Do you want me to come back here to tell you, if I can?”

“Mm-hmm...” Ku nodded, pressing her forehead against his shoulder. Her breathing calmed, and Ori knew either she was asleep – and truly asleep this time – or close to it.

But he didn’t join her yet. There was a faint sound of something shaking. He looked up, and saw glowing eyes quickly move to avoid his gaze.

“Mokk?”

The moki was shivering, trying to curl up as tight as possible. “Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“Umm...” Mokk fidgeted nervously, running his fingers through the fur of his tail. “A little. I am alive, which is nice after… everything. But what you said made me think about my family, and… that they probably think I am dead.”

“Did you tell anyone where you went?” Ori asked.

“What? No! They would have stopped me, and my father and my big brother and sister would be -” He trailed off. “Very disappointed. But I miss him… and everyone. I have never been away from the tribe this long. I had to spend one night by myself in the marsh to show I was ready to be a warrior, but I got lost and couldn’t find my way back until almost the next night. But this is longer.”

Ori sighed. He knew the feeling. “Are you homesick?”

“Yes. And regular sick. And… I was homesick in the Glades, but, it is different being homesick when everybody else is homesick too, I guess. It is worse being by yourself.”

“Well… everybody _here’s_ homesick, if that counts. I don’t know about Voice, but -”

“If you mean I miss the loss of my connection with the Spirit Willow and with the land, then I suppose I am.” She winked into existence, startling Ori. Sometimes he forgot that she didn’t actually sleep.

“Oh.” Ori hesitated. “Do you want to… sleep over here?” he asked. “If Ku’s okay with it.” He didn’t _want_ to wake her when she finally got to sleep, but…

“Idoncare...” Ku mumbled sleepily, fidgeting and rolling against him. “Juswanmore… warm...”

Mokk painstakingly dragged himself over to the stump. It seemed like moving at all was causing him a lot of pain, and those few steps were a long journey. He curled up next to Ori and Ku, his breath tight and his body quivering. For a while, Ori thought he’d fallen asleep, but then he admitted: “Adventures are… harder than they sound, aren’t they?”

“Yeah… I guess so.” Ori remembered how excited Ku had been about flying, about exploring and seeing the world, and then her despairingly saying she didn’t want to anymore. He remembered daydreaming about exploring the lands to the east beyond the mountains, and the weeks when he was afraid to leave Naru’s side again.

“How do you… how do you do it?” the moki asked. “How are you not afraid?”

Ori was stunned for a moment. He’d thought… he thought he knew. At least after the ordeal getting out of the caverns. “What are you talking about? I’m scared all the time!”

“You are?”

“Yeah...” Ori said more softly. A slight flick of Mokk’s ear cast a large, fast-moving shadow across a tree trunk, and Ori tensed for a moment, staring at the spot to reassure himself that nothing was going to attack them. “Mokk, I… I have nightmares about everything that happened… everything I had to go through… when the Decay destroyed the forest I come from. I… guess I and Sein fixed it in the end, and I hope Voice can heal Niwen too, but… I’ve been terrified it would happen again, and getting stuck here… it’s like the nightmares all came back to life. That’s… that’s why I got so mad at you the other day for acting like I was… trying to prove myself or something.”

“Oh.” Mokk’s ears flattened, and he looked guilty. “Then, how do you… not give up, even when you are so scared?”

Ori sighed. “I can’t give up  _ because _ I’m scared. Because -”

“Because you don’t know what will happen if you do?”

“No. I _do_ know what’ll happen, and...” He glanced at Ku’s still form and stopped, tears welling up in his eyes. He didn’t want to say it, both for his own sake and if she was still awake. He stroked the soft feathers on her head. “I can’t...” he whispered. “I can’t let it...”

“Oh,” Mokk said again. “I think I understand.” He wriggled closer, wincing at the movement. His breathing was heavy, and Ori knew he was in a lot of pain. The moki’s face was wet with tears. “I still think you are brave, though,” he said. “It is… not easy to not let what you are scared of happen.”

“I know, Mokk… I know.” The last thing Ori remembered, he was half-asleep with his head resting on Mokk’s shoulder, and all three of them huddled together. Ku was right. It was a chilly night, and it really was nice to have a third source of warmth in the makeshift nest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there we go! Ku’s now awake at least, so she can have some actual screentime! And also making Ku suffer. The “put Ku on Magic Chemo” plan comes to fruition.
> 
> So I was doing research to figure out if there was a remotely safe way of giving someone unconscious water before the invention of feeding tubes, and it turned out no, there really isn’t, so I settled for figuring out a low-tech way for the moki to give her subcutaneous fluids. This is a bit different from an IV: the fluid is just injected under the skin and finds its way to the bloodstream eventually, and it’s easy enough that people can do it at home with animals.
> 
> And FINALLY there’s a serious comfort scene and a bit of peace. These poor kids needed a break, even if it is short-lived.


	34. Beyond the Wellspring

“Voice?” Ori panted as he rested on a tree branch.

“Yes, Ori?”

Ori was a little surprised she’d heard him. He could barely hear his own voice over the rapids below. He could hear her clearly since she didn’t speak with real sound, but he was already making the next few dangerous jumps to where the safest path crossed the river and he’d have to glide across, and he couldn’t spare the breath or attention to answer until he made it back to the ground. And he couldn’t spare the time to wait longer than he absolutely had to to catch his breath.

It was past noon already – really it was starting to get into late afternoon. It was about noon when he woke up, but it took a while to bring himself to leave Ku again. The healers said they weren’t sure if the remaining pitchmold crystals would be enough to do anything for her back, and that it was safer to only give her one a day, to make them last and give her enough strength to endure the nightly burning back of the Decay eating away at her body. They’d told Ku they’d try to put her into a deep sleep before it happened, but that they couldn’t promise the pain wouldn’t wake her up anyway. And Ori wouldn’t be there. He’d promised Ku he’d come back and see her again when he found another of the wisps, but it didn’t sound like that would take less than a day.

At this rate it seemed more like two days if he was lucky. He guessed that was how long it had taken to find the Eyes of the Forest, but he hoped the others wouldn’t be nearly as dangerous to search for.

“Ori? Was there something you wanted to say?” Voice asked more intently.

“Huh? Oh. Sorry.” He’d said something but then ignored her for a while, hadn’t he? “Now that you have two… parts of yourself, do you… feel any better?”

“A little,” Voice said. “But the wisp was badly weakened by being in Mora’s presence so long. With her attacks on me, and the energy I had to use to save Ku, I think I’m still weaker than when Kwolok first gave you to me.” She paused, and must have felt the chill of worry in Ori’s light, because she said: “Don’t worry. I’m not in imminent danger. But… as much as I’m anxious to regain my memory, we should search for the Strength of the Forest first.”

“Oh.” Ori looked up at the snow-covered mountain peaks of Baur’s reach to the north, then at the Wellspring up ahead. He’d been putting off making the decision until he reached the place where Lupo’s maps showed a relatively safe trail up into the mountains. But he guessed that made the decision for him.

  
  


He’d been hoping he’d return to the Glades to find that Kwolok’s search for the wisp had been successful and he’d have one less wisp to look for. But instead, the village had been emptier than he remembered. Grom was still there, and Tuley and Veral, but all the other non-moki residents were gone, and there seemed to be fewer moki than normal even if many of them were either out foraging for food and supplies or sleeping.

“Hmm? Oh, they’ve all gone with Kwolok to join the search!” Grom said jovially. He paused in his work using a stone scraper to flatten the edge of a board. “Except Twillen: he’s off on a shard-hunting trip in the marsh – and he’s agreed to look for more ore as well! Which is a good thing – the moki that went with Kwolok asked for some iron grappling hooks from the last of the scraps they brought with them when they came here. I just hope they’re actually using them on trees and rocks and not on each other!”

“Each other?” Ori tensed. “Wait – do you mean moki from _both_ tribes are working together?”

“Surprisingly, yes! I suppose it takes Kwolok’s presence to get them to cooperate. I wish I could say I’m glad the little furry folk are finally getting along, but at least back here they’re at each other’s throats again.”

“Over land?” asked Voice.

“No, they came to an agreement on that. One of the youngsters from Howling Grove tribe went missing a few days ago, and there’s been nasty rumors and accusations flying around like Skeetos.” Grom shook his shaggy head sadly. “I’m afraid the most likely explanation’s the poor creature drowned. There’ve been a lot of moki swimming to gather marshclams, but I keep telling them it’s not like the still waters of the Marsh: it’s calmer now but the current’s still swift and it could sweep a small creature away, not to mention something unfriendly could’ve been washed down from the lake.”

“Oh.” Ori winced, remembering the intensity and the cold of the flood, and imagining a moki caught and tossed around in that. Mokk had mentioned almost getting swept away in the current. That could easily have been him… wait… “Hold on… do you know the moki’s name? Was it Mokk the Brave?”

“Hmm… I don’t know about any titles, but I think the name did rhyme with Tokk’s.” Grom shrugged his upper pair of arms. “I heard it and I was confused for a moment why anyone would think it unusual for Tokk to wander off someplace!”

It had turned out Mokk’s disappearance was the reason for all the tension after all. Ori wasn’t sure he’d completely cleared it up: Mokk’s father hadn’t been happy to hear that he was with the Hollow’s moki and wouldn’t be well enough to travel until at least the waxing quarter moon. But he guessed it was a good thing he was going to see the others and tell them what had happened too. And part of him was looking forward to not being alone on his search.

* * *

The Wellspring was still standing, but the area around it had been scoured by the power of the rushing water. Tree trunks and pieces of the floodgates lay in places they couldn’t possibly have fallen to, the scaffolding around the old mill had been torn away in places, and it was surrounded by a sea of mud that Ori had to be careful to go around. Water was still pouring from the top of the dam, and it still foamed and boiled where it met the river, but it wasn’t nearly as terrifying.

Finding his way up the dam, though, was a difficult prospect. The Wellspring would be tricky to get back to – he’d have to use the scattered trees as stepping stones – and he’d been thinking he could climb along the ropes that raised the floodgates, but he’d forgotten that the tower where they attached to the mill was gone now. The dam’s face was covered in brambles. _Maybe_ there was a way up, but he couldn’t tell from the ground and it would be a long way to go back.

How had Kwolok even gotten up there? Ori asked himself out of frustration at first, then seriously when he realized that anything the giant frog could climb, he could probably climb just as easily. Had he gone around somewhere, and ascended the ridge on either side of the valley?

What he and Voice decided was the most likely answer was also the one he was dreading. Up the sides of the sluices. They’d been stripped more or less clean of spinebushes in the flood, and now that the flow had lessened a bit there was space for a creature to climb up without being underwater. But it was close. Ori was drenched in spray, and so were the stone blocks underfoot. They were uneven and broken, but they were slick. And while they might have been step-sized for Kwolok, Ori had to jump or climb, and half the time he was hanging onto the steeper slopes off the sides. The roar of the water was almost deafening, and the mist made it hard to see.

Now he wondered how the _moki_ had gotten up it, or Opher and Lupo for that matter. Then again, maybe Kwolok had had them strap themselves onto his back.

...Or maybe the broken ropes were now just lying against the face of the dam, had cleared away the brambles with their impact, and would be easy to climb. _Now_ he thought of it, when he was already halfway up and it would take longer to turn back. All he could do was grit his teeth and finish the nerve-wracking climb.

  
  


Even though Ori knew there was a lake on the other side, Ori was surprised to see it so close below him when he reached the top. And the sheer _size_ of it was astonishing. A whole valley was lost beneath the dark waters, with long narrow branches like fingers. Ori had seen it briefly from the air before the storm hit, but now that he knew what it was, it was… frightening. It was scary seeing that the terrifying wall of water he’d unleashed was just a tiny fraction of what was being held back by this pile of earth and stone.

He dried his paws as best he could, and unfurled Lupo’s map. This one fortunately showed the lake and the mouths of the rivers that fed it, and a label showed which one was fed by the Luma Pools. He could see where it was, but it was such a long way away. He knew it would be faster to swim straight across than pick his way through more brambles across the dam to the side of the valley and then along it. But his throat felt dry as he stared down at the dark water. It was clear, and Ori could see the slope of the dam continue down beneath the rippling surface along way, but it was so deep that all light was swallowed up.

“Okay… Soul Link… here!” Ori checked the sky automatically before putting it down. No, Shriek was supposed to hardly ever come here. It was probably fine.

“You’re not thinking of jumping in _here_ , are you?” Voice asked. “The current will pull you through the floodgates.”

“I know!” said Ori. He’d have to get a bit farther along the edge – a journey he hoped he’d only have to make once. But it was better than if he waited, and made a fatal mistake with the spines growing on top of the dam, and had to climb the whole thing again.

It really was a long way down to the water, too, he thought. A short distance compared to how tall the dam was, but still a tall tree’s height, and not a distance he liked falling into water even if it was clear. His hooves were right on the edge, but it was a slope, covered in brambles and spikes. He took a couple steps back, got a running start, and leaped. The feather carried him over the spines, and he waited until he’d almost descended to the water before letting himself fall.

When the surface closed over his head, though, every muscle tensed, and his chest immediately began to burn. He struggled back to the surface and took a gasping breath, and for a while he was barely even swimming anywhere, just trying to stay afloat.

“Are you all right?” asked Voice.

“Yeah! It’s just – just c-cold!” Ori thought that the spray had gotten him used to it, but diving in was much worse. His fur didn’t repel water very well at the best of times, and he was already soaked to the skin and shivering.

“Drownedtree Lake _is_ fed partially by snowmelt,” she said. “Even if there’s less of it these days. Is it really that bad?”

“Yes!” Ori said indignantly. His breathing was so fast just treading water. He started to paddle awkwardly towards the river’s mouth. It seemed a little better near the surface at least, where the sun had warmed the water. He didn’t want to put his head under. The water had already gotten in his ears, and it was giving him a headache like trying to eat snow did. “How would you know, you can’t even feel it!”

“I was just asking.”

  
  


Ori soon saw how Drownedtree Lake had gotten its name. He hadn’t thought about it before, but there must have been forest all the way down the valley however far down it went, before the river was blocked off and the water rose. In a few places, the shriveled, rotted trunks of trees still stuck up above the water, but they offered no safe resting place. Every inch of them was covered in long spines. Below the surface, they were covered in long algae and weeds, which might have been a good resting place for a fish if it weren’t for all the snapjaw vines growing there. Ori had almost forgotten about them until one caught him unawares, grabbing his ankle and dragging him under just as he was about to take a breath. He kicked and struck at it in a blind panic, trying in vain to summon any of the weapons, until he remembered that he’d been able to use Flash to navigate in the dark waters of the Mouldwood Depths.

It made the vine let go, but Ori still nearly drowned. He made it to the surface coughing and choking, kicking aimlessly, trying to swim away from where he’d been attacked but floundering. His mouth and nose went under again. His throat was closing up from the cold, and he could hardly breathe. He finally coughed up the water he’d swallowed, but his leg was bleeding, a thin trail of red leaking into the dark water. But he couldn’t heal the wound in the water either, not while trying to swim or hold his breath. And the shore was so far in every direction.

He wasn’t totally sure what attacked him next. He didn’t even know if it was Decayed or just a regular fish, only that it lunged out of the depths. Jaws closed around his leg again, and massive teeth dug in. The only thing that saved him was that it leaped out of the water, dragging him in his grasp, and reflexes and terror took over. He drove the Spirit Edge’s point into the roof of its mouth as hard as he could. Its grip slackened, and the water filled with a cloud of blood, but Ori had been dragged so deep one of his ears popped before he could work his leg free.

By the time he dragged himself onto the shore where the river met the lake, panting and coughing up more water, the sun was setting. Ori was pretty sure his leg was broken, but he didn’t have a choice but to set the Soul Link there if he could possibly heal the wound, or he’d be stuck there all night. It took all of his strength to heal it enough that he could walk at all, and he was limping.

But he’d made it. The water in the channel was warmer, and there were few enough spikes that most of the time he could walk along the banks. There were a few rapids in the river, and he was definitely going uphill, but the vegetation changed from the tall conifers by the lake to something… something out of a dream.

“Whoa...” Ori’s jaw dropped as he rounded the bend and saw it. “What _is_ this place?”

Ori had seen plants with red and pink leaves before, but never in these numbers. They seemed to dominate the area around the water. The trees, the vines, even the grass underfoot. Their forms were curved and twisted, but not like the ones in the desert, not like they’d been battered by the elements. It was almost whimsical how the vegetation wavered and twirled. The air was thick with the smells of flowers. Some of them had petals longer than he was tall – and some of the leaves on the trees must have been taller than Naru!

“These are the Luma pools, Ori,” Voice said calmly. She seemed… peaceful somehow, her light smoother and steadier than he’d ever felt it.

“It’s… like it’s a different world. Like it’s… normal,” he said. “Except… not. I’ve never seen anything like it! How come it’s not… not like the rest of Niwen? And… the rest of the places the wisps fell.”

“The Strength of the Forest,” said Voice. “Its presence has kept these pools safe from the worst of the Decay. But don’t let your guard down. If this place were safe to explore, I’m sure the wisp would’ve been found long ago.”

“I know. I’m _not_ letting my guard down. It’s just… beautif -” He stopped abruptly, his breath catching in his throat. Pain shot up his good leg like lightning. He yelped, tried to jump aside, and stumbled and fell, almost ending up in the water. If he had, he was sure he would have drowned, because for a while he couldn’t even move except to writhe on the bank in agony, kicking frantically at the ground. He couldn’t even breathe.

What had even _hit_ him? He struggled to his feet, staring at the ground. It didn’t seem like he’d even been physically hurt, other than a small, swollen puncture in the pad of his hoof. But now he could hardly put weight on either leg. He had to awkwardly walk on the side of the nail to keep from screaming.

Just one little thorn. That was all it was. Ori didn’t dare touch the plant that had done it again, but after that he was terrified that he’d step on something, or just brush against something, poisonous and it would be something _worse._

  
  


Tokk had similar words of caution when Ori finally found the group. It was him, Opher, Lupo, and a bit under two dozen damp, cold, hungry, and miserable moki. The bird was attempting to fan a few sad, smoldering embers that Tann and two other moki Ori didn’t know were trying to get going. But all he was really accomplishing was blowing smoke everywhere.

“I don’t trust this place one bit!” Tokk grumbled. “Oh, sure, it’s vibrant. But one wrong step, and you’re food for the fishes! Or worse...”

“- Could fish drier firewood out of Drownedtree lake! Did you even look for _dead_ branches -”

“You’re welcome to go out and search yourself if you’re so smart -”

“What’s ‘worse?’” Ori asked.

“You could be food for whatever the fishes are afraid of!” Tokk replied.

“Just keep putting leaves on it, eventually it’ll dry out and catch!”

“No, it’s not catching because you’re smothering it. It’s not getting any air, that’s why it’s so smoky!”

“It’s so smoky because it’s _wet!_ ” Tann snapped. “We’d be better off trying to burn the stone trees from the Silent Woods!”

“If you believe that, then throw one of the shells on the fire!” Tokk commented. “Forget it. If it isn’t going to catch, it isn’t going to catch! You can waste all night on it, but my wings are tired!” He looked at Ori with a twinkle in his eye. “Pity those Spirit Flames of yours don’t actually burn things, but at least you’ve brought some light so I might not trip on a seashell and break my neck tonight!”

There was a flash of blue light. One of the other fires burst to life. Tokk scowled. “If you could do that the whole time, you could have made yourself useful! Bah!”

Opher shrugged. “And you could have flown back to the Glades to fetch better firewood from Grom. It’s a lot of energy to use up trying to light a campfire without being certain the usual way isn’t going to work. Besides, you were making for good entertainment.”

  
  


The only one who was actually in good spirits was Lupo. And he seemed more excited to have someone who’d listen to him. “It’s a welcome change from the desert, isn’t it?” he laughed. “You know, I’ve been to a lot of lands beyond Niwen, but I’ve never found anything quite like this place. Many of the aquatic creatures here are normally found in the ocean, and I’ve never seen them in freshwater anywhere else. There’s sponges, snails, even a few corals! And of course there’s the giant mussels and clams like this one!” He patted the massive sun-bleached shell he was using as a seat. Its two halves were propped open by a forked branch, and Lupo had hung his scroll cases and mapmaking supplies from the top one, as well as his robe. Ori had almost forgotten the deep red fabric wasn’t actually part of his body like fur or feathers. He’d never known Lupo had brightly colored spots on his body.

“Wish we could catch a live one!” a moki commented. “This could feed a family for a month! Or it could be a feast for a whole tribe for one night I suppose, since it would go bad after a month.”

“Good luck shelling it!” said another. She was trying to break open a much smaller one with a rock, and having limited success. Another blow sent the shell tumbling across the clearing.

“Why are all the trees and plants _red_?” Ori asked.

“That’s an excellent question,” said Lupo. “They are beautiful though, aren’t they? I’ll let you in on a little trade secret: this is where I come for all my red ink – and dye for clothing, for that matter! I haven’t found anything else with a richer or more stable color! I noticed your sketches from the Silent Woods had some odd brown-black splotches...”

“Uhh… I cut myself on a spike by accident...” Ori laughed nervously and scratched the back of his head, folding his ears back in embarrassment. He’d forgotten about those, and now he didn’t want to admit that it would be funny to mark dangerous locations in blood on _purpose._

Lupo gave him a quizzical look. “Hmm. Well, at least you didn’t cut yourself on the paper. Opher’s said he’s sliced his finger with the edge of a scroll a few times. Anyway, I think it might be something in the water. The pools are fed by dozens, perhaps hundreds of small springs in these hills. That’s why it’s warmer here – it’s heated somewhere deep within the Earth. I’ve heard the pools farther upstream never freeze, even in the harshest winters, and they can get warm enough that it’s like a jar of water left out in the sun in the middle of summer, and mist rises off them when it’s cold! I’ve never been much farther upstream than this, though.”

“Why not?”

Lupo grimaced. “Well… you’ll see soon enough in the morning.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today in “basing Ori’s suffering on a true story,” something I don’t do often because my life isn’t that eventful. I didn’t have any encounters with dam spillways, underwater carnivorous plants, poison thorns, or giant predatory fish this year, but I did go swimming in a very chilly lake. The cold water I got used to over most of my body (I didn’t stay in long enough to be at risk of hypothermia, don’t worry) but the water in my ears was absolute TORTURE, and it kept hurting for like an hour after I got out of the water.
> 
> Okay, I decided to bring the whole gang along to Luma Pools for… reasons. It is one of the less overtly hostile environments in the game, so it’s a place that moki might THINK it’s okay to go. Lupo and Tokk are back after being completely absent for an area apiece, and I had Opher tag along because I kind of need him but the Spirit Wells aren’t accessible until fairly late in the level so Ori can’t easily run to the Glades and back. And mokisquad because I guess they just volunteer for everything.
> 
> Also Lupo without clothes is so weird lol, but it’s like… everyone else is naked or just wears hats or vests or something (except Twillen). He probably just wears the robe for the pockets and places to conveniently attach all his scroll cases and stuff. Anyway, I was ALMOST dumb enough to try to see if there was concept art of him without it on, then realized that was a really, really terrible idea. So instead I had the much funnier idea of him turning out to have really silly-looking patterns on his skin.
> 
> EDIT: Forgot to mention, there will be one more week off this year for Christmas, hopefully the last one. The next chapter might be posted on Saturday, January 2nd, due to New Year's Day, but I'm not totally sure.


	35. The Perilous Depths

As Lupo predicted, Ori found out soon enough why the Luma pools were largely unexplored.

Tokk was right. The place was a death trap. A brightly colored, beautiful death trap, but a death trap nonetheless. Some of the brilliant red plants were safe, but many of them were horribly poisonous, like the one he’d stepped on. The trees were choked by curtains of Deathglue Vines. One of them held the broken, impaled, and nearly skeletal carcass of a bird almost as big as Tokk.

But the real danger was in the water.

As Kwolok explained that morning when he returned to where they’d made camp, the earth here was like a gigantic sponge. It was how Tokk had described the Mouldwood Hills  too , but Ori guessed this time the sponge was soaked with water. The ground was riddled with submerged caves and pits that constantly changed over the years as some collapsed or filled in and others formed as tiny little cracks were hollowed out by the flowing water. The riverbed was full of holes that led into foreboding darkness. In one spot, the grass was waterlogged around what Ori thought was a puddle, but when he stepped in it he suddenly found himself underwater, and his light didn’t even reach the bottom.

It wasn’t much better above the surface, though. Tokk had planned to search from the air, but when several large circling shapes appeared in the sky he was forced back to the ground. “Rotgulls,” he said, shaking his head and clacking his beak in annoyance. “Just typical. If it isn’t the weather, it’s those things.”

“Are they… like Shriek?” Ori tried to stay under the cover of the trees. It was hard to judge how big and far away the creatures actually were.

“Hmm? Nah, not nearly as dangerous as her. They’re Decayed, and about as smart as those snapping shells down in the river. But they’re dangerous enough I’d rather not bet my life on outflying them, and I can’t do much searching if I have to keep an eye out for the things all the time. Might as well try and catch a few fish if I can get my pole back.” He shot Snesh a dirty look.

The moki barely glanced up, but his ears flicked in irritation as he fed line down a dark blue-black hole. “You can have it back once I’ve finished checking this one.”

“What, are you seeing how deep it is?” Tokk rolled his eyes. “See for yourself once you’re down there, turn around if you’re out of air. You’re making it more complicated than it has to be.”

“I’m looking for current going down into the hole. If the basket suddenly gets heavier, then -” The line suddenly yanked down, rolling the log he was perched on over, and he plunged into the water with a startled yelp. Ori leaped to his feet and jumped in after him, but he wasn’t nearly quick enough. By the time he was close enough to do anything Snesh was clawing his way back to shore along the rope he’d tied the log to a tree with, coughing and wheezing. The rope had caught him in the chest hard enough that it took a bit before he could speak or stand up, but Ori knew if it hadn’t broken his fall he’d have been pulled down. The fishing rod drifted gently downstream. Tokk plucked it out of the water.

“Hmm. Some current.” He examined the end of the snapped line.

“That wasn’t a current,” Snesh gasped, flopping onto the bank like a beached fish. “That was… something grabbing it! Ori - Ori wait, that’s not a good idea!”

“I know it’s a bad idea, that’s why _I’m_ doing it!” Ori took a deep breath and dived into the water, swimming straight down towards the hole. Sure enough, something _big_ lunged from the depths. It seemed almost like some sort of worm, with Snesh’s basket caught on one of a pair of pinchers that could impale a spirit or a moki. He kicked it away and flung himself back towards the surface, but the monster kept after him, and even after he made it out of the water it kept circling, as if waiting for him to come within its reach again. He and Snesh exchanged a horrified look. Ori had only gotten away thanks to Reem’s power. The moki had come _so_ close to dying.

Ori eventually killed the monster, which Snesh called a Twisterfish, by leaping high over it and repeatedly stabbing at it with Spirit Edge as it lunged for him, but it took an exhaustingly long time to tear it up badly enough that it stopped moving. The corruptions weren’t any danger to Kwolok, of course, or at least no more than a nuisance to him. And the gigantic frog could hold his breath for so long he could probably have crossed Drownedtree Lake without even surfacing. But he was just too big to fit into the crevices and caves. Only Ori and the moki could explore the submerged labyrinths – but not safely. It wasn’t safe at all. The walls and ceilings were lined with spikes and snapping shells, and the occasional snapjaw vine. More mobile aquatic corruptions of various types lurked in the depths as well, and just as Snesh feared, in some of the holes the current flowed down into the Earth, and it was easy to get deeper than intended and hard to get back to the surface.

Ori was nervous. His heart picked up speed every time he looked down into the uncharted depths. He knew how dangerous it was to get trapped, or lost, or caught in weeds, or get attacked and use up too much air trying to escape. He knew how easy it was to die like this, and how horrible a way to die drowning was. He’d rather have stayed up in the trees, or swum along the main courses of the rivers and streams. Voice said it didn’t seem like the wisp was close, that it was probably further upstream, and Kwolok agreed with her. But there  _ wasn’t _ a clear path upstream. A long, overhanging escarpment, undercut by the water and overhanging with a wide variety of plants that were all deadly to touch, blocked the path forward. The river plunged over it in a series of thundering waterfalls.

_ Everyone _ was stuck. There were a couple places where it looked like Ori might be able to get to the top by gliding from the treetops beneath the cliff if a corruption happened to wander along and shoot something at him that he could jump off of. Mostly it was just spines and thorns and death. There wasn’t anywhere the moki could safely tie a rope off on or attach a grappling hook to without the sharp-edged spikes cutting it, and Kwolok, unlike smaller frogs, couldn’t jump at all. Tokk grudgingly tried to carry a rope up and find a place to anchor it, but after dodging two rotgulls, and not dodging a ball of poison shot at him by one of the yellow skeetos from a massive hive in a tree above the cliff, he retreated back to the level of the water.

There  _ was _ a way through, or at least there seemed to be. A calm side channel lead to a gate across the mouth of a large cavern. It wasn’t solid, or at least it shouldn’t have been: the gaps between the tree trunks that made it up should have been more than large enough for spirits and moki to slip through. But they were so overgrown with thorny vines above the water, and snapping mussels below it, that it was hard to even see through, let alone swim or climb through. He could get glimpses of what lay beyond it, though: a tunnel, half filled with water, with light showing somewhere at the other end. It was a way up, for all of them, if it could be opened. But that was the problem.

“ _Eight_ keystones?” Ori regarded the carved stone pillars flanking the gate with a look of withering disgust. He’d cleared away the vines covering them, hoping there might be a hidden lever, only to find… this.

“Hmm… seven. One’s right here.” Opher pointed out a barnacle-encrusted rock that lay not that far away.

“Why would it need _eight?_ ” Ori kicked at the stone. It didn’t budge. He had no idea how they were going to get the barnacles off: it wouldn’t even fit in its slot like this.

“Perhaps a bigger Spirit Gate needs more keystones?” Lupo suggested with a shrug. “Think on the bright side -”

“Maybe I’ve actually been poisoned by some plant that makes me see things that aren’t there and when I die it’ll go away?”

“Ori!” Voice chided. “Complaining isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“If Lupo’s right it’s better to have a lot of small keystones than a few huge ones.” Eema tried to chip a barnacle off with a shell. “Like those stone eyes.”

“I was going to say Kwolok will fit through it too,” said Lupo.

“Why even make a Spirit Gate with holes in it?” Ori contemplated using Lightspike on the mass of thorns and vines. No… it was powerful, but it would probably just punch a hole too small to crawl through without being impaled and skinned alive.

“Maybe to let spirits through but keep bigger things out?” suggested Tann.

“That is correct, young moki.” Kwolok had hauled himself out of the water and was resting on the bank. “I know of this gate. I visited here in my youth, before the dam was completed. Powerful servants of decay would make their way upstream, trying to destroy and corrupt this place.”

  
  


One way or another, the path forward had to lie in the foreboding depths. Either they’d find all the keystones, or they’d find another passage that lead upstream of the cliff, and have to venture on without Kwolok’s help and protection.

But it was dangerous. It was just too dangerous. There’d been too many brushes with death. Five of the keystones were found now, but one of the Howling Grove moki had his leg broken by a snapping mussel, and he was held underwater and would have drowned if Opher hadn’t broken him free. Another had the rope around his ankle that was supposed to keep him from getting dragged down by the current get snagged, and inhaled water trying to get back to the surface. Ori had his fair share of close calls, too, and he knew it was only a matter of time before someone didn’t come back up.

So that someone  _ had _ to be him. He had to find the rest of the keystones on his own, at least below the surface. He didn’t care how dangerous it was. Or at least, he hadn’t when he was on the surface. Now, with his lungs already starting to burn as he approached the pit in the riverbed, he was fighting to keep from changing his mind.

He carefully pushed his spear out ahead of him over the opening, holding it in one hand just behind the point. Suddenly something invisible pushed down on it, twisting it in his hand. Snesh had refined the basket idea into attaching a sort of paddle of lashed together leaves and branches on the butt of a spear and using it to probe for dangerous currents, and now several of the moki were using them. Ori was as well, since he couldn’t use his other abilities underwater, but it was awkward to have to hold onto all the time, it was unwieldy with the drag of the water, and while it was lighter than the keystones it was so long that he couldn’t dematerialize it at all. He wasn’t used to that, and he’d dropped it and had to retrieve it from the surface an embarrassing number of times.

This time, he returned to the surface for a different reason. He rematerialized the safety line, tied it around his waist, and tied the other end to a tree stump. It probably wouldn’t reach far enough to really explore, but it would at least be helpful to climb up. He decided to just leave the spear: it would just be too  awkward if the passage narrowed. He took a deep breath, and dived back down to the cave. The opening was deep, deep enough that the light was dim and muted, and he could feel the weight of the water all around him squeezing him, crushing him. His heart sped up as he slowly drifted towards the opening. This current was certainly a dangerous one: it wasn’t faster than he could swim, but it dragged him into the depths. The surface was farther and farther away, and then it was gone around a bend. Ori’s lungs were burning again. He let the current carry him down the uneven-edged tunnel – he had to save the air for the harder work of swimming back up.

But just like he thought, the safety line ran out, and it did so suddenly, yanking him to a stop so hard it forced a few bubbles out his nose. It hurt… he had to untie himself, but the knot was too tight! He fumbled with it, now upside-down and kicking downward to avoid being swung up into the stinging polyps on the ceiling of the passage. They’d given him a small stone knife, too, but rope was too scarce to cut it if he didn’t have to.

Finally he worked the knot loose. “Ori?” Voice asked. “You should probably return to the surface soon.”

Ori couldn’t answer with words, but he shook his head. He was just going to explore a little farther… the passage had widened here, and the current wasn’t as strong. He was hoping to find an air pocket, but there was just weeds and mussels and sponges like grotesque underwater mushrooms. But then he saw a familiar glint! He swam towards it, ignoring the growing pain. This was it… a keystone! It was much too heavy to swim with, but if he could just… dematerialize it, or… he had to breathe so badly! No – no! Forget the keystone, he had to surface! He had to surface  _ now! _ He turned around and swam back the way he’d come, but even the slow current took more effort to fight. Ori’s chest was convulsing. He reached out and grabbed at the end of the rope as it waved gently in the water. He pulled himself along it, not swimming anymore, just climbing back towards safety. He was so close! So close! Panic seized him, crushing his chest like a fallen tree. He clawed his way frantically out of the hole and kicked away from it, his vision starting to blur.

But when he saw just how far away the surface really was, his willpower failed him. It was too far… too far… too deep. He sucked in an agonizing breath of cold, heavy, fatal water, and without the air in his lungs drifted back to the soft sand of the riverbed as everything went black.

The first breath of air, the first several breaths, were a surprise. They always were. He doubled over choking and coughing, trying to clear nonexistent water from his lungs. The red moss blurred in a haze of tears.

“Ori! What happened? Are you okay?” Eema scampered to his side, followed closely by Tann, a few other moki, and Opher. Her eyes flicked to the flame of the Soul Link, and Ori’s dry coat, and she winced.

“I’m… I guess I’m fine,” Ori said weakly. He stared out at the calm water. “I… found one of the keystones. But I don’t know how anyone’s going to get it back. It’s just… too far down.”

  
  


* * *

“You know...” Opher dragged his staff back and forth in the water, making swirling eddies in its wake. “I might have a technique that can help you.”

“I doubt it,” Ori said bitterly. His throat and lungs still felt like they _ought_ to hurt. “Unless it makes me grow gills and breathe underwater like a fish.”

Opher laughed. “That would certainly be useful!” he said. “But sadly outside of my knowledge. I do have the next best thing, though. With proper control of your breathing and heartbeat, you will be able to hold your breath for longer. This is an art that takes years to master, so I can’t promise too much improvement right away, but there are a couple of simple tricks that should make a bit of difference. Have you been practicing the techniques I showed you to calm your body and your mind?”

“Uhh… when I remember to?”

“I’ll take that as a no,” Opher scowled.

“No, I – I’ve been trying, it’s just… hard to remember when something’s trying to kill me!”

“Oh… yes, it is. That will come with practice, and experience, but… ah, I’ll just have to make do with what time you have. So let’s not waste any more. You are afraid that the water is going to try to kill you, aren’t you?”

“Uhh… yes, because it is.”

“No. The water has no will of its own. You must respect it, and you must be aware of the dangers, but this is not a struggle against an external foe. The true enemy is within.”

“That sounds encouraging,” Tann commented.

Opher shot him a dirty look and continued talking. “Overconfidence, fear, impatience, and haste will all work against you. For you, it seems like fear is the root of them all. Right now you are treating it like a fight for your life every time you stick your head below the surface. You are tense, and you are breathing too fast and too hastily when you are at the surface. Your fear of drowning is making you run out of air faster.”

“How am I supposed to _not_ be scared of drowning when I’m about to drown?”

“That is the tricky part...” Opher sighed. “I can see we have a long way to go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 2021, everybody! Hopefully that's the last of the hiatus weeks behind me, though it depends on how fast I'm able to write some of the more difficult chapters.
> 
> I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all of the commenters on this fic! Your support means so much to me, and seeing your comments has definitely been a bright spot throughout this crazy year!
> 
> Anyway, regarding this chapter...
> 
> Water breathing? What water breathing? I’ve never liked playing with this ability in either game because it takes away from the tension of having to not just hang around underwater all day and having to manage air as a resource. And as a writer… do you really expect me to NOT drown Ori? So, I heavily nerfed that ability and turned it into “Opher attempts to give Ori a crash course in actual freediving technique.”
> 
> Also, Bubbles? What bubbles? Okay, I *could* have written the bubble platforming, I think I had the bubbles in the Silent Woods chapters, but I didn't like playing the bubble areas that much anyway, and, uhh, bouncing on floating bubbles does kind of detract from my "Write Will of the Wisps like it's a horror game" strategy! Besides, I wanted to try some more stuff with the underwater aspects, and in this segment Ori's challenges are less platforming-focused anyway.
> 
> Poor Ori hates Spirit Gates so much now, though!


	36. A Familiar Stench

Despite Ori’s complaints, he did his best to follow Opher’s counterintuitive instructions. It was all easy for him to say, though. The weapon master had never  _ actually _ drowned. How was he supposed to keep his heart from racing when he contemplated diving down and risking finding himself out of reach of the surface?

The breathing techniques did help him, though. Just waiting on the surface and taking fast, deep breaths, then gradually slowing them but keeping them deep and letting his pulse slow until he took one last deep breath and dove. It definitely took longer before the urge to breathe again became painful. Keeping every movement measured and efficient, even when his lungs were burning and he wanted to make a mad dash for the surface, was much harder. Trying it in calm water near the surface, with the knowledge that air was within easy reach, he could sort of do it, but actually exploring the caves and realizing he’d gone far enough that he might  _ not _ be able to make it back, fear took over.

The clear water took his life three times more, and poisoned spikes above the surface a third, but as the sun neared its zenith, Ori finally wrestled the final keystone into place with shaking, exhausted hands and held his breath. The stones glowed. Something shuddered and creaked beneath his feet. And a cheer rose from the moki as the enormous gate began to rise. It was slower than the normal spirit gates, and moved unevenly, lurching upward, until halfway up it got stuck and wouldn’t budge.

It was easy enough for Ori and the rest of the smaller members of the party to dive underneath the gate, but Kwolok had a more difficult time. The bottoms of the vertical posts were covered in sharp barnacles and mu ssel s, and the great frog barely fit underneath.

“Hmm, perhaps you’d have an easier time jumping off the waterfall on the way back down,” Tokk suggested. Ori wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, but Kwolok nodded.

“That is worth considering, Wanderer.” There was a spark of humor in his eyes. Were _either_ of them joking? Kwolok was breathing heavily, and he’d left some of his mosses and lichens, as well as a bit of skin, on the gate posts. Blood was trickling down his back, but he hadn’t said anything to acknowledge the injury.

The tunnel beyond the gate was easily wide and tall enough for the entire group, and sloped gently upwards until the ground rose out of the water and up to the daylit forest above. The terrain and the vegetation weren’t really any different, but it sort of felt more vibrant, more  _ alive _ .

“Are we getting close?” Ori asked.

“We are,” Kwolok answered. He took a deep breath, puffing out his throat, and blinked slowly. Even he seemed more alive here. “The Strength of the Forest is near. I can smell it. But its power is all around, in the water and the air. I cannot tell which direction it lies. You would have to ask the Voice of the Forest.”

“I’m not sure either,” Voice said. “In the Mouldwood Depths my sight’s Light was clear in the total darkness, even if it was faint. But here, it is as you say – I can’t pick it out from the rest of the Light.”

Tokk clacked his beak irritably. “Well, I suppose we’ll be searching the old-fashioned way, won’t we? A lot of good you Light creatures are doing today, hmm?” he joked with an amused glance at Opher. He checked the sky again, shading his eyes with a wing. “No sign of those Rotgulls, finally. Think I’ll take some weight off this leg.” He’d been hit by the glob of poison around his ankle. The wound was bandaged now, but before it had been weeping angry red and yellow-green fluid from between the scales, which almost seemed to be turning transparent.

“Do not count me out of the search just yet!” Kwolok boomed jovially. “You will search above the water, I will search below.”

“What, do you want to make a race out of it?”

“No, but… never mind. The dangers have not all passed, but I had forgotten how pleasant this place is,” the frog mused. “Such a long time has passed since I last left my hollow. I must thank you for giving me hope again, little one.” He bowed his head slightly to Ori. “Before the Decay, I was the guardian of all of Niwen’s streams and rivers. I must admit, I am looking forward to the day when I can roam the waterways freely again.”

  
  


With the search for the Strength of the Forest begun in earnest, the party began to spread out and break into smaller groups. But even in this place, seemingly filled with Light and life, the Decay still ruled, and the dangers had only gotten worse. The plants’ toxins were more potent, the Decayfish and Twisterfish in the waters more numerous. One had caught Ori off guard, a smaller variety that burst from an anemone and shot toward him at lightning speed. He twisted out of the way, but it hit the rock face behind him and exploded like one of the roller beetles he’d fought during Nibel’s blindness. He was stunned and drifting listlessly in the water when the rocks collapsed and brought a tree down on him.

But at least he’d come back. He’d come back, and the injuries were gone. Some of the moki weren’t as lucky. A crablike corruption had grabbed Tann’s spear haft as he stabbed it and spun around, slamming him into a tree trunk so hard that ribs were broken. Another moki had tried to push through a plant with hairy, lurid ly purple leaves. Her eyes and nose were so badly swollen from its poison that she could barely see or breathe, and her mate’s paws were in similar shape after he touched her fur while trying to drag her to safety. There was a spirit well, but it was underwater at the bottom of a sinkhole, and it didn’t work. There were only a few life shards left aside from anything Ori could collect, and there wasn’t much left to bandage wounds with either.

And not all of them had even been that lucky. Ori hadn’t seen it happen, but he’d heard the screams. A climbing rope had snapped… right over a cluster of spikes. He’d come running trying to help, but it was already much too late. The moki had died just like Ori had so many times: impaled and trapped, trying in vain to drag himself free but only wrenching the deadly spines around worse in the wounds.

  
  


Another, he’d seen and not been able to do anything. A younger moki called Osen was just swimming along the surface of the river channel, not even diving down into the crevices of the riverbed. The current was slow and lazy, and the water was clear. It didn’t seem like there was any danger, but something  _ big _ had lunged from the depths and just… grabbed him. It was right in sight of Kwolok, right in sight of Ori, but it happened so fast neither of them could do anything. One moment he was there, the next there were only ripples and boiling, foaming water. Ori knew he must have been pulled down one of the crevices, but no one ever found him.

After that, the decision was made to split up again, but stick together in smaller groups. All five of the surviving moki from Kwolok’s Hollow – Osen had been among them – followed the enormous frog up the main river channel. Three others went with Tokk to explore high, rocky outcrops where he said the wisp might have fallen, since the cliffs were impassable without him flying ropes up and throwing them down. Opher and Lupo joined them as well – Lupo to reach the high vantage points that would make mapping the Luma Pools easier, and Opher to protect them. Three were too badly injured or poisoned to go on, and stayed behind along with Eema’s uncle Aldan.

That left seven with Ori. Eema, Tann, and Snesh had all immediately volunteered to go with him. The other four – Bira, Turran, Merah, and Eter – were from Howling Groves tribe, and seemed more like they wanted to avoid the cliffs and spikes that had claimed their tribemate’s life as much as possible. Part of him liked having the company, but he was on edge the whole time, knowing that they could be attacked at any moment and it was up to him to keep them all safe. Having the extra pairs of eyes and ears did help when they  _ were _ attacked – several times the moki spotted an approaching corruption before Ori did – and so far nothing but a few Decayfish, crabs, and Skeetos had come after them, but that didn’t make it any less nerve-wracking watching them twist away from claws or pinchers or skewers with just inches to spare.

Ori’s attention was divided between looking for the wisp, or at least for anything that could help them find it, and watching for danger. He didn’t realize until somebody pointed it out that there were only  _ five _ moki with him now.

At once his heart was in his throat. He looked wildly around, ears and antenna twitching, hoping he’d s ee a cave or crevice or patch of dense vegetation where they might have gone. But in the jungle those were  _ everywhere _ .

“What’s going on?” Snesh jumped down from a tree branch, wincing as he landed on all fours.

“Turran and Bira are missing,” said Eter. He was a tall, muscular moki with a large raw patch on his shoulder where a corruption had attacked him during the tribe’s escape from their old village. “Who saw them last?”

But no one could say for certain who’d seen them last, or exactly when. Ori knew Turran had helped fend off a group of the crablike Decayed, but that had been a while back. The group had spread out a little bit, and everyone was supposed to stay in sight of someone else, but no one had seen them leave, or heard them say why… but nobody had heard any screams either.

  
  


  
  


“Don’t worry yourself too much, Ori,” Voice said. “We don’t _know_ anything bad happened.”

“How am I supposed to not worry?” Ori snapped. He glanced over at Eter and Merah, the missing mokis’ tribemates. They’d gone a ways ahead, and for some reason everyone else was okay with that even though that was how Turran and Bira had gotten lost in the first place! Ori was _not_ letting anyone else get out of his sight, but Eema had put her paw on his shoulder and told him to stay with them. He didn’t understand it. He’d thought maybe Eter and Merah were suspicious that the Owl Meadow moki had done something _to_ them, but they weren’t acting hostile at all, just… weird. “Why would they just… vanish without telling anyone if there wasn’t something wrong? Do you think they really just… wandered off by themselves to go exploring?” he hissed, keeping his voice low. Ori wasn’t used to staying with a group like this, but he’d found out the hard way how important it could be. It seemed almost insulting to suggest that they’d be this stupid after all the dangers they’d already encountered in this place, and he didn’t want Eter and Merah to hear.

Snesh stifled a laugh. “Yeah. Exploring  _ each other _ , maybe.” Eema shot him a glare, but then cracked up herself.

“Huh?” Ori folded one ear in confusion.

“Bira had very… inconvenient timing,” Eema explained with an expression of sympathetic discomfort.

“Timing of what?” asked Ori. Disappearing? It wasn’t like there was ever a time for someone to get lost that _wasn’t_ inconvenient. But the moki seemed just as confused by his reaction at he was by their words.

“Uhh… the _special_ time?” Tann stared at Ori, looking more and more perplexed. “Do spirits have a sense of smell? At all?” he sounded genuinely curious.

“Yes!” Ori replied defensively. He sniffed the air, wondering if he was missing something. The smells of the water and plants and rock and the rotting smells of Decay were everywhere, and he could pick up the moki’s scents as well, but they all kind of blurred together. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, so just tell me!”

“Oh.” Tann looked a little embarrassed. “I guess since you’re not a moki it’s not as obvious.”

“ _What’s_ not as obvious?”

Eema sighed. She looked at Tann and Snesh like she was expecting some kind of help, but didn’t find any. “Well… Autumn is the season when a female moki’s body is ready to have pups.”

“Pups?” Ori glanced up at Voice, who he was also hoping would say something. “But… Naru said a creature’s belly swells up before having babies. Bira’s didn’t look any different… and you or Merah don’t look any different from Tann or Snesh or –”

This time it was Tann’s turn to burst out laughing – or at least to double over coughing. “Ow… stop… my chest… hurts...” Eema and Snesh were at least trying to suppress it.

“That’s… not quite what I meant,” said Eema. “Uhh… I guess spirits grow on trees, don’t they? I don’t even know how to explain...”

“It is _necessary_ to explain the details of how your kind reproduces?” Voice asked irritably.

“No, you’re right. What I’m trying to say is, there are two or three times every year in the Autumn that female moki feel the urge to...”

“Pollinate?” Tann asked sarcastically. Snesh snickered, Eema rolled her eyes and swatted at his ear.

“The _point_ is that it’s really… awkward and unpleasant if you’re not actually _ready_ to have pups.”

“For _everyone_ ,” Tann added with a grimace.

“So, it’s not unusual for moki to sneak off somewhere private to, uhh… groom themselves.” Eema looked like the conversation was physically painful. “Or to have… help from their mates.”

“You mean, like helping keep watch?” Ori asked.

“That _would_ be a better idea than what they’re probably actually doing,” she sighed. Then her eyes widened. “You’re right Ori, even if nothing bad’s happened _yet_ , they’ve put themselves in real danger. Being alone, and, uhh… not exactly paying attention to their surroundings, in a place like this… it’s hard to blame Bira, but you’re right to be worried.”

“Then why are we… not really all looking for them?”

“It’ll be a little less embarrassing for _everyone_ since Merah and Eter know them,” Snesh said quickly.

Merah looked back with a scowl. “Not less painful. If I catch them in the act, I’m going to sling an acorn at them. The least they could’ve done was say something...” Merah was Mokk’s older sister, and according to Mokk was a good huntress. She had several teeth, claws, and feathers on a cord around her neck, including ones that looked like they’d been cut down to size because a whole one would have been so big she’d trip over it. She didn’t look like she had any intention of missing.

“Don’t worry too much, though,” Snesh said. “The one bright side is that her scent’s not exactly difficult to track.” He sniffed at the base of a tree. “On the other paw, if she’s not careful what she rubs up against she could end up poisoning herself...”

  
  


  
  


Ori could never identify the scent that the moki were tracking. But he certainly heard the scream. He jumped, his ears swiveling to the direction of the sound. Everyone else had heard it too. Eter’s head snapped upward.

“Bira?” The moki called.

The scream came again. It was faint, far away, and almost lost in the rustle of leaves, but it was unmistakably the cry of a creature in pain. Ori exchanged a horrified look with the moki, and the whole group took off running towards the direction of the sound. All thought of whatever embarrassing situation the moki were trying to avoid was forgotten. They vaulted over fallen trees and across a small, shallow stream. Tann was lagging behind, gasping for breath. Eema had slowed her pace to match his, and Ori did the same. He was about to ask if Snesh should be running that far ahead when they caught up to the others again. They’d stopped and were looking around, sniffing at the ground, and tilting their heads and swiveling their ears from side to side with bewildered expressions.

“What’s – what’s wrong?” Tann panted, wincing.

“I don’t know,” Eter said sharply. “The scent trail is gone. And sound shouldn’t have carried this far here. We might have gone too far past the stream.”

Snesh shook his head. “I think it was going the other direction,” he said. “Are you sure we went the right way at all?”

“Of course I’m sure – you heard it too, didn’t you?”

Then, with no sign of distress, Bira’s voice called: “I’m over here – Turran I’m over here!” There was a pause longer than a creature taking a breath should have been. “I’m fine! That wasn’t – that wasn’t me!”

That was odd. It really did sound like it had come from a different direction. And… it had been difficult to hear, and he didn’t know her voice that well, but he could have  _ sworn _ it sounded like her.

“Turran? Where did you go? Turran!” Bira’s voice called his name again – louder, clearer. “Come on, let’s get back to the others!” Then her calls turned into a yelp of abject terror. “No! No! Wait – don’t come this way, don’t come thi -”

The cry was abruptly cut off by a screech that sounded  _ identical _ to the one he’d heard before. Ori stood there stalk-still, listening for any other voice, any other sound – but there was nothing.

“That sounded like it was from that way again,” Tann finally said. “Which… which way?”

“There must be some strange… echo or something,” Merah said. “Let’s just find her scent again. _That_ won’t lie to us.”

They set off back in the direction they’d come. This time Snesh stayed back with Ori, Eema, and Tann. “There can’t have been any cliffs that close to make an echo,” he muttered. “Eter’s right – the trees should have muffled the sound. This is  _ weird _ ...”

But the moki picked up Bira’s scent again, and, sure enough, it was going at more than a right angle from the path they’d taken. It became too faint for them to follow after a short distance, but Merah found something else – a scrap of white fur caught on a bramble. She sniffed it, and declared it was Turran’s.

But there was no reason for him to force himself through those thorns. The patch was small, and there was a clear path around it. Unless he’d been running. Unless he’d been in a panic – trying to get to Bira or get  _ away _ from something else.

Then… they found her. Eema was the one who went around the other side of the rocky outcrop first, and from the startled shriek she let out Ori thought she’d been attacked as well. But she came back around, almost staggering. Her eyes were wide and her fur was standing on end.

“Uhh… Merah? Eter?” she said shakily. “I… think you need to see...”

The moki had all unstrapped their weapons from their bodies, but when Eter saw the puddle of blood on the ground and looked up into the tree, his spear fell from his grip. Ori’s legs almost gave way under him.

Bira’s corpse was pinned to the tree trunk, upside down, much higher than Ori could jump. She wasn’t resting on a branch or tangled in vines – it was like she’d been  _ nailed _ to it, long spikes driven through her body and embedded in the wood – through her chest, through her stomach, through the one hind leg she still had, through her  _ eyes _ . It looked like her body has been  _ twisted _ all the way around, so far the skin had split. Her fur was matted with blood… dried blood. Flies were buzzing around her.

Ori didn’t realize he’d stopped breathing until his lungs started to burn. When he finally took a breath,  not just the smell of blood but the overpowering stench of rotting plant matter hit him. A nauseating,  _ familiar _ smell.

“I know what did this...” Ori murmured. He took a few blind steps back away from the gruesome scene, his eyes darting from side to side. It was _here_ , it was here, it was here! He couldn’t see the tendrils, but everything else… the voices, the screams for help coming from the wrong direction – the screams that Bira _couldn’t_ have made, because there was no way – she had to have died _before_ they’d heard her cries. The way her body had been mangled and staked to the tree where they could see it… and the smell. There was no way that smell could be anything else. It was just like in the memories of the _third_ spirit who’d died inside the Wellspring.

“That’s not a _what_...” Merah’s hands were shaking. She pulled the cords of her sling taut. “It’s a _who._ ”

“No – it’s a – it’s a corrupt – a Decayed!” Ori stammered.

“Decayed only kill. They don’t… they don’t – do _that!_ ” Merah’s voice suddenly rose to a shout. “I know no one in _our_ tribe could ever _would_ ever – and a moki _couldn’t_. You’d have to be stronger than a gorlek – and even then you’d need a _hammer_ to drive those spikes into the tree.”

“What?” Eema bared her teeth. “Have you lost your mind? Ori would never -”

“I know – I know it wasn’t him.” Merah took a deep breath. “He’s been here the whole time. But there’s only one other creature here who can make those Light weapons.”

“ _Opher?_ ” Ori said, shocked. “But – no – I told you, it was a Decayed! I know the smell… and I saw it do this, to… to other spirits!”

“ _Other Spirits?_ ” Merah hissed. “There have been no spirits in Niwen since before any of us were born.”

“I saw it in a memory!” Ori hurriedly explained what he’d seen in the Wellspring. “Opher saved me from it!”

“So you and Opher are the only ones who saw this _foul presence_?” Eter asked skeptically. “That’s convenient.”

There was a spark of irritation from Voice. She floated high above the group, her light brightening to a harsh glare. “ _ Enough _ ,” she said. “Merah, I have to take Ori’s word about the  _ smell _ , but everything else I witnessed with my own senses. Ori is telling the truth. The creature that killed your tribemate is a Servant of Decay. It has killed spirits, and it has killed many other moki by stopping the wheels of the Wellspring. If it has come  _ here _ , I am afraid that now the waters are free, it seeks to corrupt them at their source.” She dimmed back to the normal soft blue glow. “I am sorry for Bira’s fate. We can only hope that Turran heeded her final warning,” she said. “But there is no time to search for him. We must speak to Kwolok immediately.”

Ori nodded. He’d been thinking of speaking to Opher, but… even Opher had said the monster in the Wellspring was too strong for him to fight. Kwolok was the only one who would know what to do. “Let’s go,” he said. He tore his eyes away from the mutilated corpse with a shudder. He’d known it was dangerous… he’d known that he should have been keeping an eye on  _ everyone… _ “Stay close to me,” he said. “Don’t go out of sight of me,  _ ever. _ Unless… I say run, then -”

Suddenly Eter was uncomfortably close to Ori, standing on his hind legs and looming over him. “You don’t give us  _ orders _ , Spirit. Even Kwolok only gives advice.” He jabbed a finger at Ori’s chest. Ori stepped back, quivering. He’d barely suppressed the reflex to send the moki flying with Bash. “ _ You _ can go find Kwolok. Right now if Turran’s alive,  _ he’s _ separated from the group. We can’t leave him -”

“And then what, Eter?” Merah was winding her sling cords back up. She sighed and slumped back onto all fours. “That thing is _hunting_ us! If it’s anything like Howl… you know three moki would be just as dead as one...” She turned to Ori. “Spirit… I would gladly give my life to avenge Bira’s right now… but if you… if you can take that honor from me… I don’t care… I just want it _dead!”_ With a sudden burst of anger she lunged at a fallen branch, snarling and digging her claws into the bark. Her breathing was fast and ragged, and her tail lashed rigidly in broken, jerking movements.

“I can’t...” Ori’s voice sounded hollow in his own ears. “I’m sorry… I think even Opher was scared of it… I think I can maybe distract it, but...” Like that had ever done anything. That hadn’t helped Ku when Shriek attacked them. It hadn’t helped Rall… “I can’t keep you safe from it… I can’t keep anyone safe...”

“Ori, it’s all right...” Tann said gently. “Nobody’s expecting you to fight something like that by yourself. Let’s just… let’s do what Voice said. Whatever that monster is, Kwolok will be able to deal with it.”

“No.” Ori couldn’t get the voices out of his head, couldn’t stop imagining what Bira’s final moments must have been like. “Eter’s right. We can’t leave someone behind.” He wanted to run, or hide, or just let Kwolok take care of it, but watching the two grief-stricken moki, he couldn’t. If Tann was the one missing, or Snesh, or Eema, would he have even been asking himself if they should have? “And we can’t split up.” If he left Merah and Eter to search by themselves, that would be the same mistake he’d made with Yeret. “Let’s just… let’s just give it a chance...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god… I think this is the up there in the most awkward chapters I have ever written. I cringed deep inside of my soul writing this, and was very tempted to not include that scene, but on the other hand the idea of the mokisquad trying to explain things to Ori, who has absolutely no idea what’s going on, was too funny to not use, and uhh I have a T rating so I guess I’m allowed to use it for things besides gore.
> 
> I was planning to have the Foul Presence play a more active role in Luma Pools for a while by having it attack straggling moki, but then I checked my worldbuilding notes on Moki biology/culture and went: “Wait a second...” Long story short with Niwen’s climate creatures with moki’s small size and really slow growth kind of have to have pups in spring for them to survive their first winter, and at some point I put a 5-6 month gestation period in my notes. Probably because Snesh mentioned the season Eema and Tann are going to be married way back in the first chapter they appeared so I had to make sure that made sense. That puts the, uhh, Season of Love in Autumn, and it somehow took until now for me to go: “Wait… the events of WotW take place in Autumn too…”
> 
> I’d say it wouldn’t be a horror story without the classic slasher film cliché of the first victims being that one couple who sneak off to get intimate, except that’s not quite what happened. Bira and Turran may have been planning that initially, but what REALLY got them in trouble was the Foul Presence’s ability to mimic voices. It might well have imitated the rest of the group’s voices coming from the wrong direction and lead them farther away before it separated them from each other. Note that Mop Boy can’t actually understand language: it just mimics what it hears.


	37. Lost In Paradise

Ori and the rest of the group searched everywhere they could for the missing moki, but the longer they searched the more hopeless things seemed. They couldn’t risk splitting up at all, not with the threat of the tentacled horror looming over them, and the only thing they could really do was call his name. But Merah eventually pointed out the same thing Ori had thought of but was afraid to say out loud. The thing had lead them down the wrong path, and lead Bira to her death, using the others’ voices. If Turran was alive, it was probably because he’d realized even his own tribemates’ calls couldn’t be trusted. They were more likely to draw the monster onto themselves than they were to find him.

And it was already well past noon. The Luma Pools would become even more dangerous when night fell. They had to find Kwolok.

  
  


Ori almost decided to ignore the Ancestral Tree. He had more important things to worry about than how some ancient spirit had died. And he’d be losing  _ all _ awareness for however long it took for the tree to share its memories. He wasn’t actually sure how long that was. According to Voice it wasn’t long, but it wouldn’t take much time for something to attack them. But then again, even the one in the Mouldwood Depths had been safe from the darkness, at least temporarily. It was worth trying, if nothing else for the chance that it would show him a way to destroy the monster or at least buy enough time for the moki to escape if it attacked him.

As it turned out, it didn’t. At least, not unless it attacked him underwater. The technique the spirit of the ancestral tree showed him let her dart through the water at incredible speed, nearly as fast as Ori could run on land. He couldn’t even say it let her swim as easily as a fish, because even most of the fish couldn’t keep up with her. She couldn’t quite swim up a waterfall, but she could overcome the strongest currents and easily leap up steep rapids. It was like she was  _ pulling _ the water around herself, each kick sending a pulse of focused current behind her body so strong it overturned large stones and stirred up clouds of sediment from the riverbeds, and the force shot her forward so fast that bubbles trailed from her limbs. But it didn’t even feel as fast as it was: she made a sort of shield around herself a bit like the one Nir used for Charge Jump, but streamlined and sharpened to a point. 

And just like Charge Jump, it was a deadly weapon, striking hard enough to stun stronger creatures and just  _ break _ weaker ones. Before the Decay, she’d _ hunted _ with it, pursuing fish and tearing them open or sending them flying out of the water. Ori had no idea his kind even  _ could _ eat meat. He thought he’d be sick from the taste and smell the moment he was returned to his body, maybe even before then. But when Niwen’s light faded, it seemed she’d refused to turn on her fellow spirits, because she only used the power to run from them and tear apart the grotesque horrors that swam up the streams to the Luma Pools, until, as always, the day came when she made a mistake. She’d died in the treetops, staring over the hills to the East at the faint golden light still flickering in the distant Spirit Willow’s heart. It hadn’t shattered yet, but it was a faint ember that didn’t reach all the way out here, and the red forest looked worse than it did now that a piece had fallen here.

Ori felt an intense pang of longing as he returned to his body. For the first time in months, he wanted to feel not just Sein’s light but the Spirit Tree’s. He’d been hesitant, afraid to connect with him, but… maybe it was the feelings of the long-dead spirit getting mixed up with his own, but it had never really occurred to him that there could be, that there  _ would be _ a last time he ever saw them. And he wasn’t even sure that time lay in the future. But he wasn’t given a chance to think about what had happened, because as he got up a shout rang out across the lake.

“Ori! Come quickly! We found him! We found him!”

Eter’s voice didn’t sound as happy as it should have. A chill ran down Ori’s spine as he saw the figures of five moki standing between the shore and the sixth. He leaped into the water and immediately tried the new technique, but he couldn’t match the ancestral spirit’s fluid grace, or even come close. He was able to launch himself awkwardly across most of the distance, but only in short, clumsy bursts, and he swallowed a little water in the process. He dragged himself up the sharp gravel bank, coughing and spitting out the bitter-tasting water, but nobody even said anything, just glanced in his direction. Their attention was riveted on Turran.

Something was wrong.

“What – what happened?” Ori gasped.

“We don’t know – he is not talking to us!” said Merah. “Turran – Turran it’s us!”

“He was trying to jump in the water, like he was trying to get to the tree!” Eema explained. “We’re worried he’ll drown, but he swiped at Eter when he tried to stop him!”

There was no sign of fear in Turran’s eyes, and no sign of pain. There was just… nothing. They were unfocused, glazed, the pupils dilated but mismatched. His jaw was slack, and foam dripped from it. Half of his left ear dangled limply, and it was bleeding badly, but he didn’t even seem to have noticed. He was standing on his back legs, but unsteadily, swaying and twitching. His breathing was fast and uneven, and his fur looked like it was matted with something sticky.

“I think he must be poisoned by something,” Snesh muttered. “Hopefully Kwolok will know, but it would be nice if he could tell us _what_ so we can avoid touching it! I’ve never seen anything like this!”

Tann looked completely petrified. “It’s like the Creeping Stone… sometimes moki aren’t killed right away, but they just… go crazy before they die -”

“There is no Creeping Stone here!” Eter snapped. “Whatever this is, there… must be a way to cure it, if we get him to Kwolok -”

“I can smell the Decay on him!”

“It’s the same as whatever killed Bira,” said Merah. “He must have gotten away from it -”

“Just back off and let us try to talk to him!” snarled Eter. “This isn’t your place!”

“What if he jumps in the water again?” asked Snesh. “He could drown himself _and_ you struggling like that -”

“He’s not trying to get to it anymore,” said Voice. “He seems more interested in… Ori?”

She was right. Turran slowly shuffled towards Ori, staring unblinking at him. He nodded, but backed away. It was unnerving… Tann was right, the stench of the Foul Presence was all over the moki.

“Like a moth to a torch,” Merah commented. “At least if he follows you we can try to keep him safe -”

But Turran did more than follow Ori. Without warning, he lunged, leaping at him with bared teeth but without a snarl – without a sound. Ori yelped in surprise, and started to form the Spirit Edge out of habit. He suppressed the reflex just in time, but it made him too slow to dodge. Turran’s claws caught his ankle, sending pain shooting up his leg. The half-formed blade of light disintegrated, breaking into a burst of Spirit Flame. Two tongues leaped from Ori’s palm as he rolled aside, striking Turran in the chest. The moki fell with a sort of gasping noise, but got back up, smoke curling from spots where his pelt had been burned away.

The next thing Ori knew Eter’s spear point was leveled at his chest. He stumbled back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – I didn’t mean to hurt him!”

“Put that down _now_!” Eema shouted. 

“Turran’s not in his right mind, he’s unarmed, and _he_ can instantly heal wounds!” Eter jabbed the weapon accusingly at Ori even though he was well out of reach. “You swim into those death-caves without a second though but you squeal and bite like a frightened pup against a friend?”

“Turran isn’t, you have no excuse!” Snesh was gripping his spear tightly.

“Ori, just get away from them,” Eema growled. “Eter, if you want us to back off, then -”

Ori was still reeling. He’d used Spirit Flame. He’d actually used it without the focusing orb. It was weak, but –  _ how? _ He’d never been able to here before – no, there were times he’d come close, but never controlled, and it didn’t seem like it had  _ really _ worked. Was it because the Light here was stronger and the Decay weaker? But how had it  _ hurt _ him? Sein had told him the first time he ever used it that it only harmed others who meant to harm him. It hadn’t hurt Mokk – but it hurt Turran? Was the moki actually trying to  _ kill _ him? It didn’t matter – they were right, he knew that, it had just been an accident. He had to stay back, stay back and hope it… wore off or something. He dashed back, outside the sort of circle the other moki had made around Turran.

Turran’s listless gaze snapped from side to side – moving his whole head while his eyes stared blankly ahead.

“Turran?” Eema started to back away too. He was looking straight at her now. “Turran, it’s going to be all right. I don’t know if you can hear us and if you’re scared, but...”

Those were the last words she got out before, as suddenly as the first time, Turran lunged. Eema reacted faster than Ori had, but she couldn’t turn to run in time. In the blink of an eye both moki were rolling on the ground, kicking and clawing and biting, and making a piercing screeching sound Ori hadn’t even known they were capable of. Tann tried to pry them apart, but he was kicked in the chest so hard all four of his paws left the ground, and when he got up he was as unsteady on his feet as Turran had seemed. The others were shouting and trying to separate them too, but were just as unsuccessful. But they were doing more than Ori. He just stood there. His heart was in his throat, but his body wouldn’t  _ move. _ What did he do? Any of the techniques the trees or Opher had taught him could kill a moki, and even if he could kill Turran he was as likely to hit Eema as him. Spirit Flame shouldn’t have hurt her, but – no! No! No! He couldn’t even make the power work again, and -

“Use the power that throws things!” Voice shouted. The instruction thawed Ori’s frozen limbs, but before he could do anything… it was over.

Eema kicked Turran over her head and scrambled to her feet, her chest heaving in and out. He tried to get back up, but collapsed in a spreading pool of blood on the white gravel. Red liquid bubbled from his mouth and nose, and gushed from a wound in his throat. The broken point of a stone knife was buried under his shoulder blade. The rest of it was clutched in Eema’s paw. She stared at it like she’d been the one impaled on it, and let it fall to the ground. Her whole body was trembling. Her ear was torn, and her fur was matted with blood. But she was alive.

The gurgling, rasping sound of Turran’s breathing suddenly stopped. His lifeless eyes stared into the sky. For a moment the clearing was silent, everyone staring shocked at the moki’s body. Then, Turran’s tribemates moved.

Eter lunged with a furious scream. But he had a weapon in his forepaws. There wouldn’t be another fight like that. He could kill in a single blow. Ori was scared out of his stupor again. He dashed between him and Eema, sidestepping the spear and sending its wielder flying just like he’d fought the urge to do earlier. But the greater danger was Merah. A stone whistled across the clearing, so fast Ori could barely see it. It whipped past Eema’s head and caught Snesh in the arm as he went for his own sling. He let out a cry of pain and dropped the weapon. Tann ran to pick up Eter’s dropped spear, but it was taking all his strength to even stand on his hind legs, and Merah had already reloaded. She whirled her sling menacingly around her head, her eyes wild with rage and grief.

“ _Stop it!_ ” Ori screamed. He stood between the moki from the two tribes, ready to… what? Use his body as a shield? Knock the next stone away? No – it was too small, it shouldn’t work any better than trying to reflect spine slimes’ needles. “Just stop!”

“Stand aside, _Spirit_ ,” Merah hissed. “I know you can’t send this back at me.”

She was right. Ori’s heart pounded in his throat. He couldn’t – he wasn’t sure he could even react fast enough to do anything. What did he do? What did he do? “Or  _ what? _ You’ll kill me?”

Merah’s glare faltered. “Not  _ you! _ That  _ murderer _ is going to pay with her life, and if I have to get you out of the way first, I -”

Ori almost glanced back at Eema. No – if he took his attention away from Merah, was that going to be the opening? Eter was back on his feet, and trying to slink around behind him. No! If she killed him he’d come back, but it didn’t matter because it wouldn’t stop her from killing the others before he could get back to them. Just like… just like Ku… he couldn’t stop her… he couldn’t protect them except by  _ attacking. _ He held his shaking hands out in front of them. The Spirit Edge’s blade appeared with a sizzling hiss, blue flames streaming around it. “If you shoot… if you shoot that I’ll… it doesn’t matter who it hits, if you shoot you’ll be  _ dead! _ ” he snarled. He took a slow, uncertain step closer – close enough to get to her with Dash. Merah started to edge away, but kept her sling spinning fast enough for the rock to stay in it. “Do you know what this does to creatures that aren’t Decayed?” Ori knew. He always knew. He’d seen it before he’d ever used the spirit weapon. The thought of doing it to a living creature made him sick. It was so close to that moment of tension in that clearing in the Marsh, so many years ago, when the Spirit Edge’s inventor finally caught up to her quarry, before the fight that would claim both their lives.

“I already told you… I already told you I’d give my life for my tribe and kin...”

“Is your brain Decayed too?” Tann panted. “Turran attacked us – attacked Eema! You’re accusing her of murder for defending herself?” His head snapped towards Eter. “You! One step closer with that blade and… I’ll run you through!”

“You _will_ give your life if you keep trying to fight Ori instead of the slasher lizard behind you!” Voice shouted. But she spoke with two voices at the same time. Another warning, one that Ori knew only he could hear, rang out in his mind “Now’s your chance!”

Merah’s eyes widened. She looked, only for a moment, but that moment was enough. Ori sprang, leaping into the air and slashing the blade of light over the moki’s head with lightning speed, severing the cords of her sling. The stone went flying off into the trees. Ori hadn’t thought the move through beyond that point though, and he crashed into her, sending them both tumbling to the ground. Merah was on her feet first and knocked Ori’s out from under him, then tackled him and forced his wrist to the ground, hissing and baring her fangs. But Reem’s power flung her into the air. Ori rolled to his feet, summoning the blade again as she landed on all fours. She stared at the sizzling point, almost close enough to burn her whiskers off. Ori let the blade dissolve.

“You… _you_ tricked me.” Merah gulped. The blow had knocked the wind out of her, and her eyes were watering.

“You would have taken an innocent life if I hadn’t,” Voice said calmly, but with an icy intensity. “I hadn’t thought of destroying your weapon – count yourself lucky Ori did.”

“This is between moki – between tribes. It isn’t your place to choose sides, _Voice of the Forest._ ”

“It concerns me _because_ it’s between tribes, _Merah._ Did you consider how many would die if your actions had started a war? My place is to protect Niwen as a whole, including _your_ people. And I don’t know all the customs of your tribe, but I assume you have laws for how crimes are judged? Or is whatever moki happens to be nearby at the time the sole arbiter of justice?”

“I’m sorry...” Eema choked out. She was hunched over, almost curled into a shuddering ball of fur. Tann dropped the spear again and slunk back to her side, and she pressed her body against his. “Merah, I’m so sorry… I didn’t want to kill him… he would have torn my throat out if I hadn’t.”

“If you’re so convinced what Eema did was murder, then let her stand trial,” Voice hissed. “Under Kwolok’s judgement, or under your own elders if you believe he is too biased. Even if her tribemates aren’t accepted as witnesses, I can promise you my eyes will be. I saw and heard everything that happened here today.”

Merah said nothing. She just nodded, and shrank away from Voice’s light. She padded up to Turran’s corpse and nuzzled him, then recoiled. “No… no, forget it.” She tried to slide his eyes closed, but they sprang back open. “You’re right… his life was claimed by Decay as well. I saw it, I know he… he wasn’t himself… but you can’t… you can’t watch someone die like that in front of you and do – and do nothing, and feel nothing!”

“I know...” Snesh was clutching his arm like it was broken. “It’s hard to judge you with how… how that looked.”

“Then I forgive you for trying to shoot me. How is your arm?”

“Still… still attached!” he winced. “I… that saved Eema’s life, though, that I did, didn’t it?”

“...It might have.” Merah sighed. She went to tear a leaf from one of the red plants, and laid it gently over Turran’s face. “Is there any way of burning his body?”

“I do not think so,” Eter said solemnly. “Not with the trouble we had lighting a fire at all last night.” He and Tann exchanged an uneasy look. Eter had been one of the moki arguing with him about the campfire. “Unless -” he started to look at Ori.

“I can’t.” Ori shook his head. “Opher didn’t – he didn’t teach me how.”

“I expected that… I expected that...” Tears filled Merah’s eyes. She gripped one still, lifeless paw with all her strength. “Then… you will rest here, with your mate. I… Please forgive us for lea… leaving you...” she whispered. “I hope your souls still find peace.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My hobby: foreshadowing the absolute FUCK out of events everyone knows happened in canon. Not Kwolok fight time *quite* yet!
> 
> So I guess we finally find out how scary Ori’s powers are against normal creatures. And for that matter how dangerous moki are to things that aren’t corruptions. A moki fight is basically like a cat fight if cats had opposable thumbs and actual knives. I don’t think their knives have got much mention so far because you’d have to be suicidal or desperate to get that close to a Decayed. But if your spear breaks or is lost it’s easier to carve a point onto a stick if you have a knife. They’re also better than claws and teeth at cutting vines, or plant fibers, or gutting fish… and even if you have fangs and sharp claws, they won’t make as wide or deep a wound as two inches of knapped flint.
> 
> The very brief fight between Merah and Ori was interesting to write because the way she responded was exactly the right way to deal with a moki with a longer weapon – get inside their reach, pin their forelimbs, and the next step is to bite their throat if they don’t keep their chin down or their eyes if they do. Bash remains Ori’s best power.  
> Also Ori is still bad at Waters techniques lol.
> 
> Moki traditionally cremate their dead because, similar to some religions IRL, they believe that the soul is only free to pass on to the afterlife when the body is destroyed. They also want to PREVENT corpses from being eaten by scavengers or left to rot - “Sky burial” is NOT okay. This is influenced by the fact that Ori’s world contains “Vitivores,” creatures that can consume the life force of their prey, as well as Decayed which simply trap it. This includes Howl’s species, Great Owls, and… Spirits! Symbolically, this traps pieces of the soul and the deceased will not be whole and at peace until the death of the creature that consumed them. There’s also a practical basis since rotting corpses spread disease, especially in a forest infested by Decay. That, and there may well be cases of types of Decayed that can reanimate an actual corpse and use it as a puppet, not just corrupting a living creature like happened to the spiders and gorleks.
> 
> Burial, or leaving a dead moki’s body behind, is not something that is done lightly. The culture has changed a bit after having multiple generations to come to terms with the fact that sometimes the dead have to be left where they lie because it’s not possible to safely burn them. The fate of those turned to stone in the Silent Woods is REALLY traumatic for the survivors and this may well have influenced Yeret’s decision to stay with his family in death. Our funeral practices – or for that matter ancient Egypt or any culture that mummified or embalmed bodies on purpose – would HORRIFY them. Saying “May your corpse turn to stone” or “May your bones lie in a cave forever” was roughly equivalent to “I hope you burn in hell” in pre-decay times. Now that Silent Woods exists it’s basically unacceptable to say about another as an insult, especially to someone from Owl Meadow or Threepines tribe. On the other hand, saying it about yourself is still one of the most serious oaths in moki culture, since it basically means: “If I break this promise the consequences will follow me beyond my death.”
> 
> Actually intentionally mummifying or embalming the dead would be about as well received by moki culture as cannibalism or wearing somebody’s skin as a hat would be received in ours. Or for that matter how those would be received in moki culture.


	38. A Guardian's Rest

It was nearing sunset when, armed with Lupo’s map, Ori finally made it to the lake where the Light was strongest. Other than Voice, he was alone.

They hadn’t found Kwolok. There’d been no sign of him or the moki who’d joined him since they split up, and Opher and Tokk said the same when Ori’s group met theirs not long after Turran’s death.

When Ori and Voice told him about the reappearance of the monster from the Wellspring, Opher was alarmed. His aura crackled with unease in a way Ori had hardly ever seen from him.

“If that creature is here,” he said solemnly, “It is too dangerous to go on like this.”

“Like this?” Ori asked.

“We can’t rely on hoping to find Kwolok before _it_ finds us,” Opher explained. He gripped his staff tightly, and a few blue sparks shimmered at the end. “All of you moki must turn back immediately if you value your lives. No weapon you have will be any use against this monster, and I or Ori cannot protect you from it either.”

Ori thought Eter would tell Opher he couldn’t give them orders either, but none of the downcast moki said a word. There wasn’t anything to argue. The party with Ori were a broken, defeated shell of their former selves. Snesh and Tann couldn’t pick up a sling at all, and Eema couldn’t hit a tree trunk from ten paces. She’d barely spoken since the attack. She was wounded badly, and she’d lost a lot of blood, and… well, Ori had tried to imagine what it was like, then tried  _ not _ to because he knew he couldn’t pay attention or think straight if he did. She’d taken another living being’s life… her own kind’s life. It had been hard enough for Ori to realize the spiderlings were still there under the Decay clouding their minds, and the ones he’d killed could have been saved, and maybe the corrupted Gorleks too… but Turran had been  _ with _ them. Even Merah’s aim was off. She carried the last spear the group had: the other had been split in half. One piece was used to splint Snesh’s arm, the other had Turran’s name carved into it and was driven into the gravel as far as they could get it. 

Opher’s group weren’t much better off. All of them were alive, but only Lupo and one of the moki weren’t injured, and the news of their tribemates’ deaths had shaken them too.

“I will stay with the moki and Lupo,” Opher announced. “I doubt I can repel an attack from our stinky friend, but it seems that it may be treating our Light with some caution. We will join Aldan’s group at the large Spirit Gate and shelter there for the night. Unless Kwolok says otherwise his companions should make their way to us as well,” Opher said with a glance at Ori. “If there is no good news by morning, we will return to the Glades then.”

Tokk tilted his head. “Define good news,” he said.

“Either the Strength of the Forest being found or Kwolok destroying the ball of roots would suffice,” said Opher. “The latter would mean the moki can safely continue downstream on their own, the former would mean there’s no reason to be up here anymore!”

“Hnn. Well, I’d rather be done with this place, monster or no monster,” Tokk grumbled, and stretched his wings. “Don’t leave right at daybreak. I’m not flying messages around in the middle of the night.” He hobbled down a stretch of mostly flat ground and got airborne with some effort. He was the only one besides Ori who’d be going on, searching from the air until daylight ran out.

The rest of the party said their goodbyes. Merah gruffly thanked Ori for saving her brother, while Eter just gave a reluctant-seeming nod of his head. Snesh embraced him with his good arm. Tann did so gingerly and Ori was careful not to hug him back because of his hurt ribs, but Eema nearly collapsed Ori’s chest.

“Good luck,” she said. “May Light guide your… well, may you light your own way. And… be careful, Ori.”

“I will.”

“Will you?” There was a hint of sternness behind the twinkle of amusement in Opher’s eyes. “Ori… remember everything I have taught you.”

“The Lightspike?” asked Ori. “And – and the breathing!” he added hastily, noticing the scowl on Opher’s face.

“Yes, those as well. But what I _meant_ was to be patient, and do not let your emotions control you,” the weapon master said. “That is how this enemy traps you.” He sighed, and laid a hand on Ori’s shoulder. “But you did well. You did very well to avoid any… more bloodshed than there had to be. “I...” Opher shook his head sadly. “Only wish I had such discipline at your age.”

But Opher was wrong, Ori thought. He hadn’t done enough. If he’d been  _ quicker, _ if he’d thought of using Reem’s power to separate the fighting moki before it was too late… maybe Turran could have been saved. Maybe whatever had poisoned him would have worn off, or Kwolok could have done something, or… or something. But he’d just frozen.

* * *

  
  


“I think we’re close,” Voice said. “I can feel it, I still can’t tell where, but I know the wisp is close.”

Ori nodded. He glanced at the sky. There was no sign of Tokk – was he already looking for somewhere to roost for the night? He’d probably have to find a place, too. Even in the dense forest his light might still attract the Servant of Decay. And searching the depths of the pools and underwater caves with no light but his own wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He’d found he could use the Flash ability underwater, but the shield was smaller and weaker and he ran out of air much faster.

At least he’d gotten better with what he was calling the Swim Dash. He could still only use it in short bursts, but he’d figured out how to steer it from side to side a little bit by twisting his body – after a couple of painful collisions with rocks and mussels. It was tiring and used up air much faster even with the techniques Opher had taught him, but it was so fast he could make it deeper into the caves, take a moment to look around, and then run for the surface.

“Okay. I think I can explore this lake before sundown, but then… maybe we should find a place to hide for the night.” Out of habit, he set the Soul Link there by the bank, hiding it among the leaves of one of the bushes that was safe to touch. He wasn’t _expecting_ to drown, but with the tendrilled horror stalking the red forest he felt safer keeping it nearby, so he could periodically check that nothing was waiting to ambush him. Besides, sometimes he found something useful, like a Spirit Shard, and it was nice to rekindle it and not have to worry about losing something he’d just dematerialized.

But as Ori waited by the water’s edge, letting his heart slow with every deep, calming breath, he saw movement in the corner of his eye. He jumped to his feet, expecting one of the faster-moving Decayed, but it was a moki, one of the ones who’d gone with Kwolok. His fur was in disarrayed, wet spikes, and for a moment Ori was reminded uncomfortably of Turran, but the fear in the moki’s eyes was real.

“Ori! Voice… of the forest!” he panted. “Something is wrong with Kwolok! Hurry!”

“ _What?”_ Ori’s blood turned to ice. He looked nervously up at Voice, hoping she could explain what could be _wrong_ with a creature as powerful as Kwolok, but she offered no answer. “What happened?”

“I don’t – I don’t know!” The moki was close to tears as he ran ahead of Ori. “Kwolok found the Strength of the Forest, but something found _him!_ It found us!”

_ Something… _ no… no! It couldn’t be! But the smell that hung in the air was unmistakable. How could it have hurt  _ Kwolok? _

  
  


The great frog sat listlessly in the shallows. His face was expressionless, his throat and eyebrows twitching erratically. His eyes were milky and clouded, and looked so much like the statue’s stone ones as they stared, unblinking, at the orb of light that hung motionless in the air in front of him. Black, foaming liquid ran from his eyes and mouth. There was an overpowering  _ heat _ radiating from his body – not like a fire, but like the pools of boiling water around Mount Horu. And the water  _ was _ boiling. Steam rose from the surface, and a great  _ stain _ of murky, dark purple water was spreading across the lake, like creeping roots or tentacles. The color of Decay. The smell of Decay.

“The wisp was deep in the water!” the breathless moki explained. “Kwolok helped it rise, but when he did, this… this _thing_ tried to take it! The Strength of the Forest lashed out, and it couldn’t touch it, but then it… it… it attacked us instead! It grabbed Mornn and Oisso and carried them away, and… Kwolok followed it, but he said to stay hidden. When he came back, he was alone, and he was… was like _this!_ ”

It was too similar. It was too similar. Ori looked wildly around. Was the monster  _ here? _ Where? Was it watching them right now? Was Kwolok… poisoned, the same way Turran had been? He looked at Voice, hoping for any comfort or reassurance. “Voice? Do you think...”

“I don’t know, Ori!” Voice said sharply. “I never thought Light could be corrupted like this. He’s not Decayed, or even like Mora. This is… different.” She paused. “Don’t worry about Kwolok right now. Once I rejoin with the wisp, you need to _run!_ ”

“What?” Ori stammered. “No – we can’t just -”

“We have to. We can look for a way to cure the poison when the wisp is safe. If nothing else, when I am completely restored my Light can purge all traces of Decay -”

“I know! I know! But I’m not leaving the moki behind!” He had to get them to safety. But how? The cliffs! Kwolok was too big to jump! He wouldn’t be able to reach them!

“Ori, there are too many lives at stake to risk all of Niwen for just a few -” she stopped. Her aura buzzed with so many conflicting emotions he couldn’t identify any of them. Before he could argue with what she’d said, she added: “They’d be in more danger close to you. The Servant of Decay is still a danger as well. Now be ready.”

She floated closer to the Strength of the Forest. It shuddered, and began to move towards her as well. Her light became smooth and steady. But then, just as they were about to merge, Kwolok’s tongue shot out like a striking snake. Ori yelped and jumped away, and Voice veered off just in time. But the wisp didn’t move. It was caught, and disappeared into the great frog’s cavernous mouth. Ori stood there, rooted to the spot, as Kwolok slipped back into the deeper water, disappearing in a cloud of bubbles.

“He… _ate_ it?”

“Uhh… I’m not sure, I think it’s been forced out of physical form,” Voice said. “Either way Kwolok has it trapped. This is bad...”

But things soon went from bad to worse. A dark tendril shot from the murky water, lashing across the shore so fast Ori barely had time to jump. It clipped his heels and swept his legs out from under him, knocking him to the ground with a dizzying impact. Another followed, and another, and another, anchoring themselves to trees which bowed under the strain. And the thing they hauled from the churning water wasn’t Kwolok anymore. At least, it wasn’t  _ just _ Kwolok.

Ori’s legs shook as he was finally confronted with the monster that had been hunting them all this time. The shapeless horror had attached itself to Kwolok’s back. He was dragged from the depths like a stone caught in an uprooted tree stump, with the tendrils wrapped around his body and wedged between his jaws. His limbs flailed aimlessly, his eyes milky and sightless. His calm, peaceful light was replaced by a baleful malevolence. The frog let out a wordless roar so deep and powerful Ori felt it as much as heard it.

Ori had never felt fear like this from Light, from his own element, before. After facing Mora’s overwhelming power, the Foul Presence was… it was still terrifying, but it didn’t seem  _ quite _ as hopeless to even attempt to fight. But the memory of facing Mora, of facing the  _ real _ Mora, was exactly why he  _ couldn’t _ raise his blade. Kwolok and the monster controlling him lunged in unison, and Ori turned on his tail and ran.

  
  


  
  


“Kwolok! Kwolok stop! No! Stop it!” Ori tore through the undergrowth, springing from side to side off tree trunks to avoid the toxic plants, and plunged into the river without a second thought. He hadn’t taken a proper breath, and his lungs were burning when he shot out of the water again. “You’ve got to – you’ve got to -” He couldn’t finish the sentence. The Foul Presence stabbed one of its tendrils into the ground, and it shot out right at Ori’s feet. It swatted him aside like a twig, throwing him into the water, and he swallowed some as he gasped from the blow to his chest. He came up coughing and choking, but he couldn’t stop running.

“Ori! Listen to me!” Voice sounded just as frantic. “You can’t keep running! You have to fight it – it’s the only way now!”

“No!” Ori shook his head violently as he stumbled forward. “I can’t – I’m sorry, I can’t!” The first arrow he’d shot had struck the monster. The second one, it had moved its tendril to the side – or maybe he’d just _missed_ and the point buried itself in Kwolok’s flesh. It wasn’t a deep wound, but blood was still running down the frog’s eyebrow. “I have to – get away and we’ll – we’ll find another way!”

“We don’t have _time_ to look for another way, Ori! I don’t know how, but that _thing_ corrupted a creature of Light. If it can do that to the wisp, if it can somehow harness its power in the service of Decay, then there’s nothing you or even Mora or Baur could do to stop it! And if it _can’t_ , need I remind you how Kwolok was lured into its trap? How it used the moki against each other?”

Ori’s heart almost stopped. No… she was right… what would it do if he ran away? What would it do to them to try to lure him out, or just to serve its own cruel purpose? The rest of the party couldn’t have made it far downstream. If it went looking for them, they wouldn’t stand a chance. Not even Opher. It was so fast… so powerful… another perilous dive, racing through a twisting underwater passage lined with spikes. He couldn’t keep running… he’d already been wounded multiple times trying to stay out of its grasp. And when he came out of the water, he found that he was cornered anyway. High cliffs blocked his way, cliffs that he’d be an easy target trying to climb up. A waterfall plunged from above into a pool with no outlet, disappearing down into the earth.

He had to fight it… he had to fight it right here, and right now… and he had to fight Kwolok…

  
  


At first Ori was defensive, timid. He just waited for the monster’s tendrils to lash out to grab him, and responded with a flurry of cuts then jumped away. He didn’t want to do anything that would risk hitting Kwolok. But eventually his luck ran out. The monster used one tendril to drive him back towards the cliff face, and a second exploded from the rock behind him. He was grabbed, and the creature started to squeeze the life out of him just like it had done at the top of the Wellspring. He felt pins and needles, his vision blurring, and… it was like something was forcing its way into his ears, into his mind. And it finally dawned on him. The thing hadn’t just crushed him instantly because it was trying to break  _ him _ , to poison his mind or turn him into a puppet just like Kwolok. Just like Turran. With the last of his strength, he activated Flash. There was a deafening hiss, and a bellow of frustration from Kwolok. The thing dropped him – or at least dashed him against the ground – and smoke poured from the retracting tendril.

But after that it changed tactics again. The next time, Kwolok’s tongue lashed out, as dark and bloodshot as the tendrils of Decay. Ori reacted on reflex, sidestepping and slashing at it three times before it shot back into Kwolok’s mouth. The blows left deep cuts, and soon blood was dripping down his chin and he was spitting it out every time he opened his mouth. And the  _ thing _ must have understood Ori’s horrified reaction, and the frantic apologies he stammered out, because after that, every blow was struck by Kwolok… or struck by the Decayed, using his body as a weapon. All Ori could do was keep running and dodging, but it started letting him dodge and forcing him back into its own tentacles, attacking from every side at once. It wasn’t trying to grab him anymore, just strike before he could hit back, but the blows were too powerful. Kwolok’s tongue slammed him to the ground so hard he saw double. The smell of blood filled his nose. Not his blood. His chest hurt… couldn’t breathe… he tried to get away, get a chance to heal, but he couldn’t concentrate, and doubled over gagging instead.

“Ori watch out!” Another blow sent him tumbling across the sharp, jagged rocks until a tree stump blocked him. There was pain… pain everywhere… he was too exhausted… He was going to die… but he _couldn’t_ die here, he _couldn’t_ , because how many others would die if he did?

“Stop holding back!” Voice commanded. “Ori, cutting its tentacles isn’t going to kill it, you have to attack its center!”

“I – I can’t!”

“I know you don’t want to harm Kwolok! Neither do I, but he’s being harmed every moment that thing has a hold of him! You have to… to free him!”

Ori saw the next attack coming. A blow from Kwolok’s immense hand, slamming down where he’d been standing a moment earlier. With a snarl that was more from anger at himself than at his foe, he brought the Spirit Smash down with all his strength.

Voice was right. He didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t keep fighting like this, any more than he could have avoided attacking Mora and just let her wear him down. If he had to hurt Kwolok to save him, to free him… he didn’t want to, but his light wouldn’t hurt him as badly.

A tentacle burst from the ground and wrapped around his leg, nearly ripping it from his body. Ori stabbed down into it, forcing the monster to let go. It was too much… it was so close to killing him like that… he had to fight back. He ran for the cliff face and scrambled up it to get more height, then flung himself at Kwolok’s face, slashing wildly at the tough, woody tendrils binding him. At anything in his path. He wasn’t totally sure what he was hitting. But he struck every blow believing – hoping – desperately telling himself that Kwolok was going to be all right. Even the Spirit Flame made no distinction between him and the monster. But he was so strong, so powerful, that Ori couldn’t  _ really _ hurt him. The frog’s thick hide was so strong that the blade barely got through it. There was still a lot of blood, but it must have just been like a scratch to Kwolok, like getting scraped by tree branches.

But a blow to his arm left it hanging limply by his side. Nauseating waves of pain shot up his body with every heartbeat. His vision was overwhelmed by a flash of brilliant blue-white. In that moment he didn’t care anymore. All he thought of was defending himself. He raised his good arm, and summoned the one attack that had ever seemed to really  _ hurt _ the Foul Presence. The Lightspike flew with the speed of an arrow, and found its target. It sank deep into the pulsating mass of Decay…  _ through _ the Decay. Kwolok bellowed in pain, and blue-black fluid mixed with crimson.

The Decayed wasn’t happy about that either. It slammed Kwolok’s entire body against the ground, so hard the rocks gave way. The ground was already riddled with holes from the thing stabbing its tendrils into it and spreading out to create beds of spikes, and Ori had caught glimpses of water below, but now it all collapsed. Ori was left treading thin air. He made a desperate leap for the cliff face, but that wasn’t safe either. A boulder sloughed off the wall above him, and dragged him down with it. Spirit, frog, and corruption alike plunged into the dark waters of a sinkhole. Ori darted this way and that, narrowly avoiding being crushed by rocks that rained down from the sides of the depression.

He was hurt, and badly. He’d finally gotten a chance to heal before the monster collapsed the ground, but he could still barely move his arm, and now there was no solid ground to stand on. There were energy crystals growing on the walls of the sinkhole, but the only thing he could use them to do was attack. That was all he could do – attack, and stay alive.

There was no time to think about whether he was hitting the monster or Kwolok anymore. He just had to hit with whatever he could whenever he had the slightest opening. The Decayed kept slamming Kwolok against the wall, bringing more rocks raining down. The small pieces of its tentacles Ori severed came to life, sprouting fins and becoming more of the exploding twisterfish that rushed blindly at him. But the worst danger came from Kwolok himself. The monster lowered him into the water, and he… he did  _ something _ . He was sucking the water into his mouth and spitting it back out, and somehow the lake became a swirling, churning whirlpool. The current was so strong that even with Swim Dash he could barely fight. He was breathing so fast, using so much air, Opher’s breathing techniques were useless. But he was trapped below the surface, with the monster’s tentacles sweeping above him. And it was getting harder and harder to see where he was even swimming. The water was becoming murky with dust and blood. 

Ori remembered the shield, and the destructive power of Swim Dash itself, after a collision with the wall hurt less than it should have. In desperation he flung himself at Kwolok – against his head. The blow stunned them both, but Ori recovered faster. He sprang from the water, up the wall. From above, maybe he could hit the monster more easily. The Lightspike lit the shadowed cavern up like a bolt of lightning. A wave of exhaustion washed over him, and he almost lost his grip on the feather, but he made it back to the wall. Another energy crystal… another chance.

But this time it ended in disaster. The monster  _ twisted _ around, putting Kwolok in the path of the missile. Using him as a shield.

Ori didn’t remember much of the fight after that. It was a breathless haze of swimming, aching muscles, choking on bloody water, and raining down blow after blow, slashing and flinging back torpedofish and whenever he had a chance throwing the Lightspike with all the strength left in his numbed arm.

Finally, the spirit weapon struck right in the center of the writhing mass of formless limbs. There was a flash of light – not the blue light of Ori’s attacks, but a strong, yellow light. The cavern felt like it was being bathed in the midday sun. Kwolok’s eye closed, then snapped open again, back to its clear, vibrant blue. He struggled in the creature’s grip – grabbing, tearing, biting. And it retreated, pulling him up out of the crater, back to the land as the light grew brighter and brighter.

Ori couldn’t follow. Not fast enough. What was it doing? Was it retreating? Or had it just decided to look for an easier target? He dragged himself up the cliff face, and up the roots and vines that overhung the edge, but his limbs barely supported his weight.

By the time he made it up, the struggle was over. But Kwolok had won. The mass of tendrils writhed under his weight, ineffectually striking at him as its body smoked. One final blow of the great frog’s fist, and the tendrils fell still and crumbled to dust.

But Kwolok collapsed too. Ori gasped in horror as he took in the injuries that covered his body. His hide was pockmarked with burn marks and punctures, and in places it was torn away entirely. The Spirit Edge had left deeper wounds than Ori thought. There was blood… too much blood. What was left of the mosses and mushrooms that covered Kwolok’s body were dripping with it.

“Little one...” Kwolok groaned. He regarded Ori with one kind eye. The other was half-closed, but bulged from its broken socket. “You have done well...” But he winced, tensing from the effort of forming the words. Blood dribbled from his mouth as he spoke. “The Strength of the Forest… is safe. And you have destroyed a great danger to Niwen.”

“Are _you_ safe?” Ori asked. “Kwolok I’m sorry I – I’m sorry I hurt you so much, I couldn’t -”

“Do not… do not worry about me, Little One...” Kwolok’s chest heaved in and out. His breathing was slow, but ragged. “I am sorry… my time as Niwen’s guardian must… end this way...”

“End this way?” Ori stammered. “No – Kwolok you’re going to be okay, right? You – you can’t die!” He looked up at Voice, his heart pounding in his throat. “Voice what do I – what do I do? He’s Light too so – you can heal him, right?”

“I can’t, Ori… I’m sorry.” Her voice was hollow, like an echo in a large cave. “Just listen… he may not have much time left...”

“The damage… cannot all be undone...” Kwolok said. There was a wistful glow in his good eye. “But you can give this land a second chance… find the wisps… bring them together again.”

“No… don’t go! Don’t – you can’t -”

“I know this burden… shouldn’t...” Kwolok coughed and spluttered. “Be yours to bear alone… but Niwen is in your hands… You must bring the Light back… and the Moki… watch over them for me… watch over this land...”

“I understand.” Voice sounded like the life had been drained from her. “Farewell, old friend.”

“Older than… you now know...” Kwolok wheezed. “I wish… could have seen… whole again...” His eyes slid closed for the last time.

He didn’t speak again after that. And Ori couldn’t either. Tears ran down his muzzle as he placed one hand on the great frog’s skin. Feeling his Light fade… feeling one slow breath, shallower than before… another… and he fell still. But a light still shone, brighter and brighter, from within Kwolok, and Ori started to see the setting sun  _ through _ him. Suddenly his skin gave way under Ori’s paw, and he stumbled. The old guardian’s body just… vanished. Like a dry leaf cast into a fire, he shimmered, and was less and less  _ there.  _ Heatless, but pleasantly warm flames consumed him. There was no smoke, no ash. He dissolved into a myriad small motes of golden light, that hung in the air for a moment. Then they began to coalesce around a central blue orb, pulled into it in a tightening spiral. Then the orb, too, merged with the familiar one floating over Ori’s head.

Ori stared up at her aghast, unable to even blink away the tears. “What happened?” he said weakly. “What did you -”

“His Light is a part of the Forest’s Strength now,” Voice said. “A part of me… he will still watch over Niwen...”

“Oh.” Ori looked back down at where Kwolok’s body had been. His body was gone, like it had never been there at all, but the grass was still bent down and soaked with blood. Ori’s fur was still soaked too. He stared down at his red-stained paws. They shook – every muscle was shaking with exhaustion and fear and grief. He staggered listlessly away, he didn’t even know or care which way, but he hadn’t made it twenty paces before he fell to his knees, retching. A surprising amount of water came up. When his stomach was empty, the gagging turned into choking, breathless sobs.

  
  


The guardian of Niwen’s waters was gone forever. Killed by his blade… by his hand… it was all his fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well… you all knew it was going to happen. Good Night, Sweet Kwolok, I hardly knew thee… and neither did Ori.
> 
> There comes a time in many, if not most Hero’s Journey stories when the mentor figure dies, leaving the hero to face the world alone.
> 
> ...Which I’m not doing in this story. I think this is what Kwolok’s death is meant to be in canon, but the thing is, at this point I have multiple characters in some kind of mentor role for Ori, and Kwolok isn’t really one of them. He’s the quest-giver, and to some extent protector, but he’s not that much of an advisor or teacher to him. If I wanted to do the stereotypical kill the mentor off before the third act thing I’d take out Opher. But it’s not like I need to kill off major characters for extra emotional impact here, because the trauma of having to take a friend’s life at all is hard enough on poor Ori already.
> 
> Next chapter is going to be… rough. If this isn’t the darkest hour, it’s damn close to it.
> 
> ...on a less somber note, the alt title for this chapter is now "The New Battletoads Installment!" Thank you so much to Plastic_SR for coming up with that joke, that was hilarious! Too soon, man, but I can't stop laughing at that!


	39. A Spirit Broken

“It wasn’t your fault, Ori...” Voice said.

“No!” Ori shook his head so hard his ears flapped painfully against his skull. “It was – I killed him -”

“Was Turran’s death Eema’s fault?” Voice said sharply. “The Decayed was what killed him, not you!”

“No – I – if I hadn’t fought him, if I’d been more careful -”

“Ori.” She paused, and said more gently: “Not all of those wounds were your making. The roots of the monster were bored into his flesh. I’m not sure there was ever any way of removing it without killing him. You at least let him die as himself, instead of as that foul thing’s puppet.”

Ori shuddered, imagining the corrupted tendrils piercing  _ his _ body. But he still didn’t believe what Voice said. He’d seen the deep wounds the Lightspike had made, the way his eye had been damaged by the Swim Dash, the way he was almost choking on his own blood from the wounds Ori had  _ felt _ the Spirit Edge’s blade carve into his tongue. It was just like the first Ancestral Tree had shown him. It was just the same. He’d… he’d lost control. His fear, his emotions, had taken over. It wasn’t even like with the spiders – he’d  _ known _ who Kwolok was, he’d spoken to him, and he’d still… he’d still killed him…

“He shouldn’t have… died like that...” Ori said. “He shouldn’t have died at all…”

“Ori, all creatures die,” said Voice. “Kwolok knew his time would come eventually, and he took on this quest knowing the journey could be his last. He… gave his life for Niwen, as so many others have. And his passing saddens me greatly, but sometimes, one life must be given to preserve the lives of all.”

“But… he shouldn’t have – it’s not – it’s not _fair!_ ” He fought to keep the tears back. The memory of Kwolok talking about how he was looking forward to exploring Niwen’s waterways again pushed its way into his mind. He’d never get that chance.

“I know it doesn’t always seem fair, Ori. But it’s a part of life. And what matters more than any individual life is that Niwen survive… that Light and Hope are kept alive, for the next generation...”

Ori’s fists clenched. His claws dragged through the damp grass. He’d been trying to hold it together. He’d been trying not to lash out like he always did, but… “How are you so calm?” he whispered. “Wasn’t he your friend? All those years?”

“Ori...”

“Wasn’t he your _friend?_ ” Ori pushed himself to his feet, his ears flattened and his teeth bared. Sparks leaped from his fur. “How can you – how can you say his life doesn’t matter? How can you talk about him like he’s – like he’s some fruit tree that fell down in a storm? Like you don’t even _care?”_ His voice was already hoarse from sobbing, but rose to a shout anyway. He didn’t care if his throat fell apart and he drowned in his own blood. Then a thought occurred to him. The memory of the last Ancestral spirit catching and eating fish… the memory of Kwolok swallowing the Strength of the forest… “Or like he’s _prey._ That’s what you – that’s what you did isn’t it? You _ate_ him?”

“Ori, this is ridiculous. Trying to blame _me_ for Kwolok’s death isn’t going to help -”

“I’m not blaming you! I’m not blaming you!” Ori shouted. “I know you didn’t – I’m sorry – I know you didn’t kill him, you didn’t hurt him. _You_ didn’t hurt him! _You_ didn’t! All you had to do was – was _watch!_ ” His paws were still red. He’d jumped in the stream when he ran away from the approaching moki. He couldn’t face them. He couldn’t tell them what he’d done. But the blood hadn’t all washed off. “Stop trying to tell me how to feel, like you – like you understand _anything!”_

That finally got the reaction he was looking for. The reaction he deserved. The flash of anger. But he still quailed under the glare of her light. Her tone was calm, restrained, level. But there was no hiding the emotion now. “No, Ori… you’re the one who doesn’t understand anything.” She paused. “Do you think Kwolok’s the only one I’ve lost?” she asked. “Do you?”

“I… I don’t know...”

“You’re the one who doesn’t understand,” she repeated. “I know you can’t help it… you’re so young… but you need to understand that no life lasts forever. Decay, and cruelty, might take away those you love… but time _will._ And you have to accept it, or it will destroy you.” She sighed. “None of the moki who found me in the swamp and brought me to Kwolok are still alive. And… Ori, the wisp we’ll search for next is my _memories._ You know those won’t all be happy memories, right? I… I hate this feeling of not knowing what I’ve lost… what’s missing… but I know it will be hard, to remember again… to remember all those who are gone. Do you think I’m going into this not knowing I will feel the loss of the Spirit Willow again? That I won’t remember all of our children, and that they’re all gone? Do you think that will be easy for me, Ori?” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I won’t tell you how to feel. But you can’t tell me how to feel either. I was… worried, and I was trying to help you but… you’re right… I don’t think we can understand each other...”

Ori just stood there, shaking with a mixture of anger and grief and exhaustion that he was sure would tear him apart, as her light faded and dimmed like the setting sun. It had finally sunk below the mountains as Kwolok’s life ebbed, and the red trees darkened in the twilight like drying blood. He heard the beating of wings behind him, and spun around.

“Kid?” Tokk asked. “What hap -”

“No! Stay away! Just – just stay away!” Ori backed away, tripping over a root and almost falling. His heart leaped into his throat. He couldn’t tell him… he couldn’t tell him what he’d done…

“Hnn?” Tokk tilted his head in confusion. His long legs took a cautious step closer. “Ori, it’s me. I’m not gonna hurt you -”

“I said _stay away!_ ” Ori screamed. He scrambled back against a tree trunk, his fur still sparking with half-formed Spirit Flame. “I don’t wanna – I can’t hurt anyone else, I can’t!” The tears broke free again. He was hyperventilating, gasping for air. He couldn’t be near him… near anyone else… all he’d do was hurt them, or something _else_ would hurt them, or – or something!

“It’s all right, it’s all right. We can talk from over here, see?” Tokk retreated to a perch on a weatherbeaten shell. “Just calm down. I saw what happened to Kwolok, and – the moki said you ran off, so I wanted to check on you.”

“You – you _saw?_ ” Ori repeated. Why was he here? Why was he here if he’d seen, why was he taking the risk of – of coming near him. He didn’t _want_ to hurt Tokk, he didn’t want to even _think_ he’d ever hurt him, but – he couldn’t help imagining it now that he knew that he _could_. If it was Tokk who’d been poisoned by the monster… Ori didn’t want to think about how quickly, how easily, the Spirit Edge would slice through feathers and skin, how easily the hammer would shatter bone, but the more he tried _not_ to, the more aggressively the visions forced themselves into his mind’s eye.

“I saw his… his light go out,” Tokk said solemnly. It seemed like the words had put a lump in his slender throat. “The moki said he’d been poisoned by the same thing that… made that one moki go crazy. Did it attack you too? S’that why you’re all scared you’ll -” The old bird stopped abruptly, his beady eyes widening. “Oh, no…” He took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh, shaking his head sadly and clacking his beak. “Kid… that’s not your blood, is it?”

“No!” Ori choked out.

“Tokk, Kwolok was attacked and the Servant of Decay took over his mind – or at least his body,” Voice explained. “He attacked us – he was forced to attack us. Ori broke the creature’s control over him, and Kwolok finally destroyed it… but he was mortally wounded in the process.”

“Stop… talking about it like it just… happened by itself...” Ori said through gritted teeth. “He’s dead because I killed him! Stop trying to pretend it – it wasn’t my fault!”

Tokk’s beak hung open in shock. He blinked a couple times, but didn’t meet Ori’s eyes, and stared out at the sunset. “Pluck me bare and stab my eyes out with my own feathers...” he murmured. Ori tensed, waiting for the anger, the fear, the look of hatred and betrayal that  _ should _ have bored into him. But it never came. “It’s hard to believe it… if I hadn’t seen with my own eyes I wouldn’t have… he’s really gone?”

Ori nodded miserably.

“Guess you and Opher were right about that tangle thing bein’ bad news… suppose even he didn’t see that coming though...” Tokk sighed sadly. “You all right kid? No – what am I saying, of course you’re not all right, not after what you’ve been through. I don’t even know what to say...”

“What?” Ori couldn’t believe his ears. “It doesn’t matter…” He shrank into a ball. The shivering, the painful tension in every muscle, wouldn’t go away. “Why are you asking _me?_ I told you I -” Why was Tokk speaking to him so gently, so… sympathetically? Did he still not understand what he’d done? “I – killed…” he choked out. Every time he said the words the weight of it cut in deeper and deeper. “I tried to – to free him and kill the Decayed but – I couldn’t keep from hitting him too and I – thought it was gonna be like Mora and – I thought he was gonna be okay because he was so strong and I – I should’ve died! I should’ve just let him kill me but I was – I was too scared and I was scared that thing would go after the moki again if I didn’t fight it and I – I panicked and I just – I couldn’t save him! I didn’t even – I didn’t even try I just… I only cared about my stupid – _worthless_ life!” He sank to his knees, panting, and grabbed his ears and just _pulled_ , digging his claws into the sensitive skin and just wrenching them down harder and harder until it was impossible to not cry out from the pain. His injured arm hurt way worse, he wasn’t sure how he was even moving it, and suddenly something _snapped_ and a scream tore itself from his throat. He let go and rolled onto his side, clutching at it. Sickening waves of pain rippled through his shoulder.

Through the haze of tears, he saw Tokk take a cautious step closer, and… the expression on his face… he couldn’t take it! “I said  _ go away! _ ” he shouted, swiping at the ground. “Stop… stop looking at me like – like I didn’t do anything wrong!” He wanted to die. He wanted to die and never come back, and – no, he didn’t  _ want _ to, he was still so scared of it, and scared of the  _ thought _ that he wanted to. He just  _ deserved  _ to die. He wanted to drive the Spirit Edge’s blade through his chest, and if that didn’t work one of the moki’s knives, but it wouldn’t do anything anyway because he’d just come back, and he didn’t even want to try to use the power near anyone else ever again.

“Ori...” Tokk said softly. “I… don’t know what to say...”

Ori braced himself for the explosion, for the anger, but  _ still _ it never came.

“Yeah. I know. I think you’d better let me try -” Tokk was looking somewhere above Ori’s head. Voice was… she was talking to him without letting him hear?

“ _What?_ ” he snapped. “What are you saying that’s so important? Are you gonna tell me I shouldn’t care too?”

Voice sighed. “Ori, I never said you shouldn’t care -”

“Let me...” Tokk interrupted gently. “Kid, I… I don’t know if you’re right or wrong that you could’ve done more, because I wasn’t there. I don’t know – I don’t think I’ll ever understand any of what you’re goin’ through. I’m hardly a warrior myself. But… I know Kwolok. And I can tell you: if you think that nasty pile of rot would’ve forced him to kill the ones he protected – and it sounds like you’re probably right – then I can tell you he’d rather have died than be used as a puppet like that.”

“But – he shouldn’t have had to – it isn’t fair...”

“Course it isn’t. Decay isn’t fair, never has been. But the thing that forced that choice on you’s the one that’s to blame, not you.”

“Kwolok wouldn’t want his passing to cause this much suffering either,” Voice said. But Tokk rolled his eyes.

“Bah! I’ve heard that one before,” the old bird grumbled. “When you get to be my age… well, I’ve been at a few funerals in my time, and heard a few last wishes. And if I had a marshclam for every time I’ve heard ‘he wouldn’t want us to cry for him’ or ‘this isn’t a time for sadness, it’s a time to be thankful for the life she had’ I’d be too fat to fly. It’s a waste of time even sayin’ it, because that’s the one last wish no one’s ever respected. It doesn’t stop your friends and family being hurt by losing you, it just makes them feel guilty about it.” He shook his head and clacked his beak in annoyance. “What was I saying? I…” He paused, and covered his eyes with a wing. His breath was sharp and halting. “I’ve said this land is falling to pieces a thousand times, but I haven’t felt it like _this_ in a long time. Kwolok was… the guardian of the marsh and the waters since I don’t even know how far back. And more than that – he gave us all hope that we could stop the Decay, or at least slow it down. It… never crossed my mind he wouldn’t be here long after I and anyone else was gone.”

“He should’ve been...” Ori murmured. He shrank into a ball, shuddering and panting like the battle was still happening. If he closed his eyes he felt like the world was moving and swaying under him, like he was trapped in the whirlpool again.

“Kid. Ori. I’m not blaming you. Nobody’s blaming you. That’s what I was trying to say, is… Niwen’s not gonna feel the same without him. It won’t be the same. And I’ll miss him as much as anybody. You know, back in the old days my kind used to nest not too far from his hollow – before the rest of ‘em left this land for good. I remember learning to fly on one of those ponds – if you can believe I was ever that young – and he’d always be keeping an eye on us, encouraging us to keep trying – sometimes gave a youngster a ride back to shore after a bad landing. I’m… I’m pretty shaken up by this too.” Tokk sniffed. Ori wasn’t sure if he saw the shimmer of tears in his eyes, because his own vision was still so blurry. “But I know you’d never willingly hurt him. And I know… well, lookin’ after other creatures is just what Kwolok’s always done. I know he’d want me to make sure you’re okay.”

And something in his words just  _ broke _ Ori. He didn’t know if it was the genuine pain and grief in Tokk’s voice, or the reassurance that what Ori was feeling wasn’t all  _ wrong  _ and it was okay for him to be… hurt like this and not just accept it, or if it was the concern from someone who had every reason – every reason to blame him for what he’d done. But he threw himself at Tokk, wrapping his arms around his stiltlike leg like he was clinging to a tree branch in a windstorm.

“Whoa – ow – easy on that leg, you’ll push me over!” Tokk stumbled and flapped his wings to keep his balance. His other leg, the bandaged one, he was hardly putting weight on. But he sat down and let Ori bury his head in the feathers of his shoulder, and patted his back with one wing, and Ori couldn’t even make himself try to say anything coherent or do anything but cry for a long time.

“It’s all right… it’s gonna be all right, kid,” Tokk said gently. “Somehow. It’s tough imagining Niwen without Kwolok, but… I suppose this must have been what it was like when the Light shattered, and… now look at you. You’re putting the pieces back together. It’s a… a real shame he won’t be around to see it, but… we’ll all do our best to carry on his work for him.” He shook his head and chuckled. “It’s funny. When I first came back here I thought I was just gonna visit, say hello to a few old friends, and see what there was to see while it was still there to see, and then I’d be off. I didn’t expect to get myself into this whole mess. But now… I don’t know.” He rose and stretched his wings. “It’s getting dark. We’d better head back to the others. And… you should talk to Opher.”

Ori winced. He knew he should. He knew he should, he knew he deserved the anger and the disappointment, but… “I know… I know I need to apologize for… misusing what he taught me. I just… did everything wrong.” He didn’t have the energy to raise his voice anymore. His words weren’t much more than a hoarse whisper.

“Huh?” Tokk tilted his head with a confused scowl. “Kid, that’s not what I meant. I’m not much of a warrior. Been in a few fights back in my youth, but not… not like this. I’ve never had to take a thinking creature’s life. Much less someone I called a friend or ally, to protect others from them. But… Opher’d understand what you’re feeling… what you went through… a lot better than I can.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Ori, I’m… sorry I said the things I did back there.” Voice bobbed along ahead of Ori as the remains of the party made their way down the river. Her light was much brighter and steadier than before. “I only made things worse for you, didn’t I?”

“It’s okay,” Ori muttered. He paused at the edge of an outcropping. It was an easy jump down for him, or for Tokk, but he wanted to make sure the moki could get down as well. Even if the monster was destroyed he wasn’t letting them out of the reach of his light. It was a dark night; the moon wouldn’t rise until long after midnight and half the stars were covered by clouds. Tokk couldn’t see a thing without him, and while the moki could normally see well in the dark, back during the journey to Kwolok’s Hollow Snesh had complained that his light kept their eyes from adjusting. Worse than staring into a roaring fire, he’d called it. He had to just focus on keeping them safe… that was what was important right now.

“I… tried to hide how much Kwolok’s loss affected me,” she continued. “From myself as well as from you. I thought it would just make it harder for you if I burdened you with my feelings as well.”

“I know.” A flick of Ori’s ears betrayed his irritation. Part of him was grateful for the apology, part of him didn’t feel like he deserved it, and he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. There was a tree branch close by that the moki could jump to. Ori hopped off the rocks and glided over the spines below to a soft landing in the gravel of broken shells.

“It was easier to just… not let myself become attached to other creatures and move on,” Voice said. “But I never expected to lose Kwolok so soon. And not… like this. I owe him a great debt for his protection and guidance that I can never repay.”

That got Ori’s attention. “I’m sorry...” he murmured, wincing and curling his tail around his body.

“It’s all right, Ori. I… know it’s hard for me to understand how much grief has changed you. How much it’s consumed you. And it’s made me worry about you. Your life may be far longer than most creatures’ too. I’m… a little worried about how attached you’re becoming to the moki -”

“I don’t care.”

“I know. I know – I wasn’t telling you not to, to push others away, I was just… concerned about your future. And it made me… not think about what you needed in the present, and… I should have tried harder to understand the best way to help _you_ cope with your feelings in a way that helped you instead of trying to make you do so in the way that was easiest for me. I’m sorry.”

Ori took a deep breath, and held it as he walked, trying not to sob. His eyes teared up again. “Tha – thanks...” he murmured. “But it’s… you still don’t understand. It’s not just… just about Kwolok dying, it’s… it’s that I _ caused _ it.”

“Ori… please believe me, and… stop trying to second guess yourself. I don’t think there was anything you could have done to stop the Servant of Decay from attacking him like that -”

“It doesn’t matter.” A flash of movement. Something in the water nearby. A low growl rose from Ori’s throat. Another corruption… too far away to be a danger right now. “If I hadn’t… if I hadn’t come here at all, Kwolok would still be alive. The -” He was about to say the moki who’d been attacked along with Kwolok, but the surviving members of the group were right _there._ “Turran and Bira would still be alive.”

She was quiet for a while. “He… would probably be alive  _ for now _ ,” she said softly. “But… Ori, before you came here Inkwater Marsh was slowly running out of safe sources of water. Kwolok was fighting to hold back the Decay spreading from the East. The tribes were either separated by the poisoned swamp or ready to fight each other another time. In another year, or maybe two or three, the moki would have had to risk climbing the Wellspring or die trying. My Eyes would have faded to nothing in Mora’s darkness. Ori, you’ve given everyone hope that hasn’t been felt in many, many years.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


Opher gave a deep sigh and shook his head sadly. “Yes…” he said. His tone was careful and guarded, but his expression, and the emotions coloring his aura, were clearer than Ori had ever seen before. Sorrow, pity, regret. “I have had to take the lives of creatures I once called friends before. I know it is… not an easy decision to make. Nor an easy one to live with, even when you make the choice that is best for everyone.” He looked at Ori like  _ he _ was the one announcing a death.

Ori curled up tighter against the wall of the cave. The stone was damp and cold, and periodically his body shook a little than stopped, like it couldn’t make up its mind whether he was cold enough to shiver. “And if you make the wrong one?” he asked weakly.

“You did _not_ make the wrong choice,” said Opher. “Ori, I know it is difficult not to second-guess every decision you made now that the danger is past and only the consequences are left. It is hard not to imagine what you might have done differently, what might have happened, if you could have acted with the benefit of hindsight, correct?”

“Yeah...”

“But what you are asking of yourself is impossible. No one can see the future perfectly, not even a being as ancient and powerful as a Spirit Tree. We make decisions with the knowledge we have in the moment. And I think you both did well. It took quick thinking to realize how that monster might react were you to simply evade it. Even with that knowledge, standing your ground and fighting it was an act of great courage – _especially_ to do so without being hobbled by your concern for Kwolok, while still caring for his safety.”

Ori couldn’t make himself speak. He shook his head, and buried his face in his arms. That wasn’t how he remembered it… all he’d done was run, and then lose control to his fear. Voice had been the one who’d seen the danger, she’d been the one who had to  _ make _ him stop running… “I didn’t try hard enough...” he finally said. “I wasn’t brave, I was just… scared. I – I barely even – even thought about what I was doing – or I did, but I just… couldn’t stop myself. I lost control… just like you keep warning me about. And I… when – when Turran tried to… to kill Eema I just froze and didn’t even think of doing anything until it was too late, and… I couldn’t do nothing again but I didn’t know what to...” He trailed off, his breath coming in quivering gasps. It hurt… his throat still hurt, and being on the edge of crying all the time just made it worse.

  
  


The dejected remains of the group that had set out from the Wellspring Glades sheltered in the cave b ehind the giant spirit gate. It was another chilly, drizzly night, and the fires had gone out by the time Ori returned. The only light was his own and Voice’s, and they cast eerie, rippling reflections off the water nearby. The absence of Kwolok’s bulky shape, and his steady, protective Light, was so conspicuous. The twenty-one moki now numbered only fourteen, and most of the ones who remained were badly injured, in a state of shock, or both. Even Opher was wounded in the leg and arm by thorns and spikes, and leaned on his staff much more heavily than before. The tribes had more or less split apart again, and were sheltering on opposite sides of the cave.

“That isn’t what I meant. Or – no, I suppose it might be.” Opher rubbed his temple. “I can’t tell you what you thought and felt, but I am worried that your thoughts and emotions _now_ are making you remember everything in the worst light. And from your description of everything that happened, I do not think I would have chosen differently if I were in your place.”

“Well… couldn’t you have… done it better? Killed the… the monster without hurting Kwolok?”

“No, Ori, I could not. In fact… well, don’t forget what I told you about why I carry this around.” He tapped his staff, which was lying on the ground next to him. “Even in my prime, I could not have afforded to hold back for Kwolok’s sake as much as you did. To have any chance of victory, or survival, I would have had to strike him decisively, to prevent the Decayed from using his power.”

Ori gulped. Opher’s eyes were sympathetic, but they had the hardness of sharpened flint. Was he saying he would have…  _ tried _ to kill him? “Did you… do something like that before?” he asked timidly. “You said you’d… killed...”

“Not quite the same situation, but yes,” Opher said. “This isn’t a story I enjoy telling, but I think it might help you… come to terms with today’s events. And perhaps put to rest your belief that I am some sort of all-knowing sage.” The words sounded like they should have been a joke, but the sparkle of humor in his eyes was gone. “I think you might benefit from hearing it as well, young moki.”

Eema stirred, and raised her head. “Huh?” She’d been one of the first to greet Ori when he made it back to the cave, and one of the most shocked when she heard what had happened. She hadn’t even believed him at first. She’d tried to offer words of comfort, but they sounded even more hollow than anyone else’s. And Ori didn’t want to hear them. Part of him wanted to just  _ leave _ , to go on by himself all night and tell Voice he didn’t  _ care _ if he got himself killed from not sleeping, but he couldn’t make himself actually do it. “Is this about...” she glanced nervously over at the other side of the cave. Her next words were barely above a whisper. “About Turran?”

“Eema, he tried to _kill_ you. Even Eter admitted it!” Snesh wasn’t as quiet. He’d seemed almost ready to attack Ori when he heard the news, then abruptly stormed out of the cave, alone, and snapped at him not to follow. And the others had been _too_ quick to try to reassure him that Snesh wasn’t blaming him. Ori didn’t believe them until Snesh came back not much later. He was damp from the rain, but it seemed like he’d been crying as well. He’d muttered an apology without meeting Ori’s eyes, and hadn’t said much of anything since. Right now he was staying by Aldan and Kas. Their other tribemate, Vesk, had succumbed to the poison of the plant that had hurt her, and Kas, her mate, was in bad shape, too. He glanced at the Howling Groves moki too, and limped closer to Ori and Eema so he could speak more softly. “If you hadn’t stabbed him then I would have. I only didn’t because I was afraid of hitting the wrong moki.”

Ori winced. He’d had the only way of stopping the fight that didn’t have that risk, and he hadn’t used it. He’d just… frozen, he’d done nothing.

“Yes,” said Opher. “This day has been… difficult. For all of you.”

Eema exchanged a pained look with Tann, but padded closer and lay down, curling her tail around herself. She didn’t have any broken bones, at least not as bad as Tann or Snesh, but she still moved like it hurt her, and there were nasty-looking wounds from Turran’s teeth and claws all over her body. “Ori come on, get away from the wall, you’ll freeze!”

Ori reluctantly complied, trying to make himself as small as possible as he crept forward. Moving hurt for him, too. He was going to just stay far enough away that he wasn’t touching the wall, only the cold stone underfoot, but Eema got up and practically dragged him into the small, bowl-like depression that she and Tann were using as a nest. Ori tensed, but didn’t have the energy to pull away. The ground wasn’t any warmer, but his will to resist was melted away by the warmth of the mokis’ bodies, and the gentle rhythm of their heartbeats and breathing. Snesh crawled in next to them, and there was a lot of fidgeting and trying to get comfortable because all of them were hurt, but… he missed this so much. He wanted so badly to be back in Kwolok’s Hollow, by Ku’s side, but… of course he didn’t want to have to leave her, she was hurt and scared and he  _ should _ have been there with her and they _ should _ have both been back home. And of course he missed Naru, and Gumo. But he hadn’t quite realized how much he missed just being part of a huddle of warm bodies. Just like his younger siblings. Most of them still weren’t adventurous enough to spend a night apart from the Spirit Tree, and they usually slept in their parent’s branches or pressed against his bark, but always in groups of at least two or three.

“What… what happened?” Ori asked. “The time you… killed...”

“There wasn’t any _the_ time,” explained Opher. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. Did you think I learned everything I know from studying dusty old scrolls?”

“I… don’t know.”

Opher sighed. “The hardest part of teaching is that you must learn every lesson yourself before you can teach it. Including the painful ones. Before I wandered the wilds selling my knowledge, I wandered it selling my skills. The lands beyond Niwen are not as ravaged by Decay, but they are far from safe. Food, water, stone, and wood are all scarce, and many tribes of creatures fight over land and resources.”

“Like ours did?” asked Tann.

“Sometimes. Sometimes worse. I wasn’t in Niwen during the war when you were pups, but I understand from Lupo that the fighting was never to destroy, only to drive away.”

“I don’t know...” Tann mumbled. “I don’t think it made much of a difference.”

“At any rate,” Opher said, “I, and others of my clan, involved ourselves in more than a few battles between other creatures. Sometimes, I think we saved the weaker side from complete destruction. Other times the ones we supported were just as bad as their enemies, if not worse. As our numbers dwindled I began to realize I was more interested in the knowledge and the skill of combat than in its… application. I wandered alone, taking on students and teaching them how to wield their Light as a weapon. But I’m afraid I still hadn’t learned my lesson. Some only wanted to protect themselves and others, as you do. Some had a more academic interest, like myself. But for some, their true goal was to have the power to conquer and slaughter their enemies.”

“What… what happened to them?” asked Ori. His eyelids were heavy now, and the voice in his head telling him to run, telling him that he didn’t _deserve_ any of this compassion after what he’d done, was fading.

Opher shrugged. “Some are still out there somewhere, living their lives, I suppose.” Then his expression darkened. A restrained, somber sorrow and guilt cut through the haze that clouded his Light. “But… many of my former students met with less fortunate ends. Some became prey to the stronger creatures that roam out there, or to Decayed. Others were too eager to prove themselves and not yet knowledgeable enough to succeed. Some of them died as heroes to their people, others gambled their lives in foolish fights until their luck ran out. But… there was one who I met again on the other side of a battle I could not walk away from.”

“Why couldn’t you?”

“For the same reason you could not simply flee Kwolok,” Opher said. “Because of what he would have done if I hadn’t stopped him.” His eyes too seemed to be drawn to the constantly moving patterns the reflected ripples made on the roof of the cave. “He was one of my own kind,” he added after a long pause. “The son of two close friends, though he was barely old enough to walk when I saw them last. He came to me seeking the power to avenge their deaths, and… I didn’t know what he meant at the time. It is always dangerous to dwell on thoughts of revenge, but there are circumstances where it is… appropriate. I thought I wanted the same thing he did, and I did not do enough to discourage him. I… should have seen the signs earlier. He was eager and talented, but impulsive, hotheaded, always angry at something. But I saw too much of his father in him to realize...”

“What, did he try to fight _you?_ ” Snesh asked. “To prove himself or something?”

“No. I don’t think he ever wanted to fight me… what he did was far worse. After we parted ways, he assembled a band, and… I didn’t know how far his idea of avenging reached. Not just to the individuals, but to their whole tribe… to all of their kind. And all those who stood in the way of that goal. The tribe that sent a messenger begging for my help wasn’t the first he attacked, and when I got there it was too late for them as well. And too late for him. The next village he reached, I was waiting for him. I… still regret not trying to talk to him, to persuade him to give up his quest of madness. But, understand that this regret is not because I think I did the wrong thing. I know it is unlikely he would have listened, and I and my allies would have lost the element of surprise. I know that it was the best course of action to treat him like any other enemy. Too many lives were lost trying to stop him as it was.”

Ori stared at his teacher, blinking in stunned silence. He’d known for a long time that a creature of Light  _ could _ become like Kuro, but he’d only ever really thought of it as something that was possible, not something that… really happened. Hearing, firsthand, that someone  _ had _ was different. “So...” His mouth was dry. He swallowed hard, but couldn’t get rid of the feeling. “I remind you of him.”

“What?” Opher’s voice rose in surprise. “No!” he answered hastily. “You’re completely...” He furrowed his brow. “Well… no. There are some things. Your determination. Your stubbornness and recklessness, at times. And the deep scars pain and loss have left on your soul, yes. But in the ways that matter, you are completely different. I was not trying to compare you to him at all, what I meant was… I understand how it feels to end a life that you once tried to save. I know how hard it is not to second-guess every choice you have ever made, searching for a reason to condemn yourself. Even if there was no other choice, even if you were forced to choose between his life and your own, or his life and the lives of others...” Opher’s eyes moved to Eema and Ori in turn. “It is normal to feel guilt, but it does not mean that you have done anything wrong. And… I would be much more worried if you _didn’t_ feel it.”

“Oh...” Eema said faintly. “I… think I understand, but...” she sighed and shook her head, her ears drooping. “I just… wasn’t expecting… when I was a pup, I was taught to fight, not just Decayed but… other moki. After the war, I just… We were all supposed to be ready to fight, and kill, to defend the tribe. And… I thought I was, and even after...” she shivered and pressed herself closer against Tann. “After the second attack, I thought… I hoped the fighting would all be over, but I still thought… that I was ready to, if I had to...”

“Weren’t you?” Opher asked rhetorically. “You had to today, and you did.”

She shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes. “I didn’t think it would be… like this. I thought it would be… like the raids when I was little, and I’d… I don’t know,  I thought  I’d know I had to fight for my life. I didn’t think it’d be just… one moment I was worried about  _ him _ being hurt, and about Eter  doing something stupid , and the next I was just… I didn’t care about anything but getting him off me, and I didn’t… I didn’t feel anything but fear, or know what my body was doing. I...” Eema swallowed hard. “I wasn’t any more in control of my own actions than Turran was.”

Ori sat there, listening in silence to words that were  _ too _ familiar, words that were so similar to his own thoughts. He hadn’t made the connection before. He’d… he’d  _ known _ , but he hadn’t  _ felt _ it. What he’d done was different. He’d ran. He’d had chances to think, but in the end fear had just taken over. All he’d thought about, all he’d cared about, was staying alive just a little longer. But what Eema was feeling… it wasn’t any different, was it? Only… he could have saved her from it. If he’d just moved faster, if he hadn’t frozen at just the  _ thought _ of what she’d had to do… “I’m sorry...” he whispered. He reached out and awkwardly wrapped an arm around her.

“Thank you, Ori,” she said softly. “You shouldn’t have had to go through any of this either…” She rubbed her forehead against his temple. “It’ll… it’ll be all right.”

“You remembered what you were taught when you needed it most,” said Opher. “That is as ready as any creature can ever be. Clarity of thought may come with experience… but I would hope that it does not. Taking another’s life should never be _easy._ Still, fate was unusually… cruel today. Fate and Decay alike.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well folks, the Luma Pools segment is officially finished! I had parts of this chapter and the one before it planned from the earliest stages of writing this fic – bits of the boss fight and Ori’s conversations with Voice and Tokk – but this segment has grown and changed dramatically. And in hindsight… oh man, I’m REALLY glad I brought the whole gang up here, and had all the buildup to this, because… well, see the chapter title. This, almost as much as Ku’s injury, is the moment that just breaks the poor child. He’s been struggling with a worsening guilt complex for a long time, but now… now there’s an experience that’s truly cemented it in his mind. Because all the other deaths might have been indirectly caused by Ori’s actions, or inaction, or existence, but with Kwolok he KNOWS that it’s his fault, that he killed him. No matter what anyone else says to try to reason him out of it, Ori remembers the feeling of his weapons piercing and destroying and burning flesh and bone.
> 
> Which is why I’m really glad that I gave him some friends by his side in the aftermath of this, because goddamn, he needed some comfort and support.
> 
> Also, here’s not only some more Opher, but a bit of backstory for him!
> 
> Last but certainly not least, OH MY GOD I HAVE FANART NOW! Lyxuu drew this amazing comic of the scene from Chapter 29 when Shriek kills Rall: https://sta.sh/0tur4jbq31h  
> This is so awesome, seriously again thank you so, so much Lyxuu! It means so much to me that my work is inspiring other artists!
> 
> And so, onwards and upwards to Baur's Reach...


	40. The Sleeping Guardian

“The Great Baur sleeps in the cave ahead,” Voice explained. “He fell into endless slumber many years ago, weary from the long winter of the Decay.”

“For… _years?_ ” Ori repeated nervously. “Uhh… are you sure he’s… still alive?” His fur was starting to stand on end. It was partly from the cold: his fur hadn’t fully dried out from the last time he had to jump in the stream to cross it as he made his way up it. Now that path ended in a waterfall up sheer, overhanging cliffs. A chilly breeze blew down the slope as he made his way up to the cave mouth. But it was also from fear. The mountains of Baur’s Reach were bound in ice and snow, in eternal winter. Ori had been in a place like that before, and the last time he’d explored inside a mountain… the idea brought the mental image of the frozen gumon back to his mind.

“I’m reasonably certain. Creatures have tried to wake him before, and they said he still breathes.”

Sure enough, as Ori crept into the tunnel he felt the wind change, and heard the low rumble of an enormous creature’s breath echoing off the walls. It smelled like stale fur and… well, he wasn’t sure what he expected the breath of a creature that had been asleep for years to smell like. And then the cave opened up, and Ori saw him. The head and upper body of an enormous bear, as large as Kwolok if not larger, were wedged firmly into the tunnel.

“If no one else could wake him up, why are we even trying?”

“Because Baur remained awake for a long time after the Light shattered,” said Voice. “The wisp must have fallen beyond his reach, but if we can wake him, he may know where it lies.”

“Okay… how are we supposed to...” Ori took a step closer to the still form, every muscle tense. There was no warmth in Baur’s slow breath. If anything, it was _colder_ than the air from outside. He couldn’t feel anything in his aura. There was some great power almost rippling through Ori’s body, but it was something separate from Light or Dark, or… almost like both at once. The bears Ori knew of weren’t speaking creatures. They rarely came near Swallow’s Nest, or near the Spirit Tree, and Ori had only seen one alive once, a shaggy brown-furred creature taller than Naru that had fled at the sight of her. She’d warned him to be wary of them. And each of Baur’s _paws_ were Naru’s size, his jaws big enough to crush Howl’s head in a single bite. But even beyond his power and strength, his appearance was… disturbing. His left eye was closed, but the right one just… wasn’t an eye anymore. The right side of his face was covered in gruesome, ropy scars, like the flesh had been rent open and… he guessed it must have been burned. The fur was patchy, and one tooth almost as big as Ori was exposed through a gap in his upper lip. “Should I shout at him?”

“No. I’d think someone would have tried that already.”

“Then what _wouldn’t_ someone have tried?” Then Ori thought of something. “What if _you_ shouted at him? In his mind? He’d hear that, right?”

“That’s what I was thinking. I’ve woken you before, but that isn’t exactly a difficult task.”

“I know...” Ori had given up on sleeping after the second time a nightmare woke him. The Foul Presence had broken into the cave in his dream – the cave the group had slept in, but it was Naru’s cave as well - laughing and speaking in Kwolok’s gurgling voice. It had dragged Naru, and Ku, and Opher, and _everyone_ into smoking fissures in the earth, and when he tried to fight it blood poured from its severed tendrils, rising higher and higher until he drowned in a lightless crimson lake. He’d woken to the smell of blood too – Snesh’s nose was bleeding from being kicked in the face.

It was long before dawn then, but Ori had left anyway, making his way back downstream far ahead of the others. He had a map Lupo had given him with a warning that parts of it might be out of date but at least mountains would stay in the same place. Tokk had said he might ‘have a poke around’ as well, but right now Ori and Voice were alone again.

“...Well, so much for that idea,” Voice said. “I suppose we’ll have to try different ways until one works.”

Ori wasn’t eager to get any closure to the gigantic face, but he tried just about everything he could think of – speaking to Baur, tapping him, shaking him, even tickling his nose with a tuft of grass. But the bear never gave even the slightest reaction.

“What if I stuck the Spirit Edge up his nose?” Ori growled. “I bet _that’d_ wake him up -”

“Ori!” Voice scolded.

“What?” Ori said defensively. “Why does it even matter? If – if I have to hurt, and – and _kill_ everyone – if everyone who gets anywhere near me gets hurt and dies why does it matter?”

“Ori… I know you’re upset, but hurting other creatures isn’t going to bring back Kwolok. It’ll only bring you closer to what you’re afraid of becoming. Is that what you want?”

Ori stopped in his tracks, balling his fists. He’d been about to just walk out of the cave. Lupo’s map showed several routes into the mountains, although most had uncertainty markings all over them. He could just find another way. He just wanted to get out of this place. “No!” he snapped.

“Then why you acting like it?”

“I’m not acting like…” Ori winced. He _was_ acting like it. “Forget it. I was joking anyway...” He looked back at the sleeping bear’s massive head again, and his antenna went rigid, so tense it made his forehead hurt. Why did it matter? Even if he _did_ wake him up, with his luck Baur would probably try to kill him like both of Niwen’s other guardians had. And he didn’t want to… he didn’t want to fight anyone else. To hurt anyone else. But at the same time he wanted to hurt _something_ , or someone. He raised his arms over his head, and the hammer of light formed in his hands. He wound up and swung it against the cave wall as hard as he could, producing an earsplitting crash and jarring him so badly he had to check if his palms were bleeding. Gravel and dust flew everywhere. But Baur didn’t stir.

“Trying to bring the ceiling down on yourself won’t help either.”

“See? Nothing’s going to wake him up! Let’s just find a different w – a different way -” He was cut off by a sneeze. Or at least, the intake of breath, since it was one of those times when his body took its time making up its mind whether he was actually going to sneeze or not. The smell of the haze of rock dust tickled his nose. “Another way up,” he finished just in time for another sneeze to hit.

“Hold on,” said Voice. “I think I have an idea.”

It was a stupid idea. A horrible, stupid idea. Break a small boulder into tiny pieces, scrape up as much dust as possible from that and from the floor of the cave, and try to fan it up Baur’s nose using the breeze from waving the feather around. “If I get covered in… spit and stuff, I’m jumping off a cliff,” Ori muttered. He ran for it as soon as the great bear’s nose twitched, but he didn’t make it out of the cave before a blast of icy wind knocked him off his feet. A layer of frost formed on the cave walls, then was knocked free as a second, more violent sneeze slammed Baur’s head into the ceiling so hard the entire cave shook. Ori had made it to the entrance this time, but landed hard on the jagged rocks of the scree slope beyond the ledge and twisted his ankle. There was a bellow of pain, so low and so strong Ori  _ felt _ it as much as heard it.

He crept back into the cave, his hands raised defensively and his fingers sparking with the half-formed Spirit Flame that was the precursor to most of the Light weapons. Not that it would do him much good if Baur attacked. The Soul Link was a ways outside and there was no way the bear could fit through the cave, but he didn’t want to be struck by those massive paws.

“Come out, Spirit,” said a deep, booming voice from outside the cave. It wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t friendly either, and it was certainly _commanding._ Ori put one tentative hoof in front of the other. It was like his body was moving on its own. “I said, come out. I can smell your fear. But I will not harm you.”

Ori took a deep breath and emerged from the cave. Snow crunched under his hooves as he left the place where Baur’s body had been. “How did you know I was -”

“O Baur, Guardian of the Lands and the Mountains, Bringer of Summer and Winter, please hear us!” Voice called. “I am the Voice of the Forest – and now its eyes and strength -”

“I know who you are,” Baur rumbled. The bear shook his head, and massive icicles that had matted together the fur of his neck clattered together. He blinked sleepily. His good eye shown with an icy blue light, a featureless orb like his eyeball was something like Voice or Sein. “I know your kind by scent as well, Spirit. And I dreamed of your return. But you are too late,” he said somberly. “You will not find what you seek.”

“Too late?” Ori’s tailtip twitched nervously. He looked up at Voice. “Is the wisp -”

“Its Light still smolders,” Baur answered for her. He slumped back to the ground. “But you will not find what you seek. Niwen has been left to wither for too long. The land is too hard. Too cold.”

“That’s why we need your help,” said Voice. “Time is of the essence. If you have any knowledge of where the forest’s Memories fell -”

“There is nothing I can do to help you.” Baur laid his head on his massive forepaws and closed his good eye. “There is nothing to do now… but sleep.”

“We just need to know where it _is!_ ” Ori protested. “Not even do anything, just – tell us where to look!”

“It’s no use, Ori...” Voice sighed tersely. A snore rose from the great bear. “He’s fallen asleep again.”

  
  


* * *

  
  


“Just try to get some sleep,” Ryn said. The moki healer yawned and brushed her whiskers back with her paw. It was nearly time for her to go to sleep and her mate, Emat, to take over. “I’m sure Ori is fine.”

“But it’s been two _days_!” Ku glared up at the canopy of leaves overhead. There wasn’t much she else she could even physically do. “He’s not back yet! He promised he’d come back!”

“He did not find the first wisp for four days,” Mokk pointed out. “Or was it three days?… I spent lots of it lost underground.”

“Kwolok isn’t back yet. Or our son or any of the others. They’re probably still searching,” said Ryn.

Ku responded with an annoyed hoot. They were right. She knew they were right. But that didn’t  _ help _ anything! It didn’t help that she’d been trapped here for two days and two nights – no, longer than that. She wanted to be angry about  _ something _ , something that wasn’t about her, because then at least it distracted her from her own unchanging position. She could move her wings and her head and some of her body, and roll herself over, but the healers said to do that as little as possible and only with their supervision and help so she wouldn’t hurt herself even worse. All she was supposed to do was lie as still as possible and sleep.

But she couldn’t, except when they gave her the medicine to help her sleep through the  _ burning. _ It didn’t really help. She still felt it, it just felt like it was a nightmare. And it still  _ hurt _ when she woke up. Her skin felt like all her feathers had been plucked out, and the scales on her legs were cracked and peeling away and her muscles were sore from being so tense but she couldn’t do much more than stretch them to try to make that go away. Her head ached and throbbed and when the day wasn’t gray and overcast like it was now the bright sun flickering through the leaves in the breeze hurt her eyes, and she felt sick and had no appetite for the soup they gave her. She was hurt and she was sick and she was tired and she was worried about Ori and she was scared and she was  _ bored! _

There hadn’t been a day since the first Spring thaw that Ku hadn’t spent running, and jumping, and climbing, and trying to fly. She didn’t think she’d ever been  _ this _ still since before she hatched. And it was infuriating being this helpless! Her talons were useless, lifeless,  _ dead _ . No walking, no running, no perching, not even holding things to play a game. She hated it. She hated it so much! She wished the moki would just give her more of the sleeping herbs if they wanted her to just sleep all the time, but they said too much of them was bad for her. Like getting burned to a crisp every night  _ wasn’t.  _ How many more nights of it would it take if it took Ori four whole days to find each wisp? What if he didn’t find them at all? What if something had  _ happened _ to him? What if he didn’t find them in time? How many more nights could she  _ take _ of it? When the burning was real it felt like a nightmare, but when she did drift off to sleep during the day sometimes she’d dream about it, or sometimes just as consciousness was about to slip away she’d feel the slightest tingling pain and jolt awake again, alarmed.

Still, she tried to follow the moki’s advice, closing her eyes and trying to let the world slip away. But the burned skin  _ itched _ , and she had to keep pecking and preening at it where she could reach, and writ h ing and trying to scratch it against the tree stump under her.

It was no good. It was no good! She was tired, she was so,  _ so _ tired, but she just couldn’t sleep! She couldn’t stop worrying, and her heart wouldn’t stop pounding in her chest. She wanted to scream and cry, but all that did was make her throat hurt, and the frustration and fear and pain never built up enough that she actually  _ did _ . It was like something was tickling her nose all the time but she couldn’t sneeze.

She had to get rid of this feeling, or she was going to go crazy. But nothing the healers could do helped. The only thing that worked was trying to take her mind off it.

“Mokk?” she asked. “Can you tell me another story? _Please?_ ”

Mokk’s face lit up. Just like always. He scamper-limped up to the stump. Ku liked Mokk. He was nice, and… it was good to have some company who didn’t force her to drink horrible-tasting medicine. Mokk could at least walk, but he wasn’t well enough to travel, so he was stuck here just like her.

“Sure,” he said. “I know lots more. Do you want a funny one, or a scary one, or...”

“I don’t know...” Ku wasn’t sure she was in the mood for funny. She kind of like Mokk’s scary stories because they weren’t _that_ scary, and… it was nice to have a scary thing to think about that wasn’t _real._ “You decide.”

“Okay...” Mokk slid up onto the stump, stretched, and winced, putting a paw to the bandage on his stomach. His ears twitched. “Oh. I have not told you the story of when I drove an entire pack of stiltstalkers out of the marsh, right?” he asked. “Okay, it is not really a story about me,” he added sheepishly in response to Ku’s skeptical look. Gumo told enough odd tall tales that she’d gotten pretty good at telling them apart from true ones. “It is about an ancient hero called Van… but I liked to pretend it was me when I was younger, and… that was fun. Anyway, a long time ago a moki called Van lived in a village by the shores of a big lake… I think it might have been Blackgrass Lake, but I do not remember. One day everything was covered in a thick fog, but Van was fishing by the water’s edge. He was not catching anything, and he almost fell asleep. But then, he saw things that looked like tall reeds moving through the water...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, to Baur's Reach we go! The quest for the forest's Memory has begun, but despite everyone's efforts Ori is still pretty mentally unbalanced after everything that happened to him yesterday.
> 
> I ended up cutting the moki interaction before waking Baur, for several reasons. 1: Baur's cave and most of the part of the Reach Ori explores is now a lot more out-of-the-way as a result of me messing with Niwen's geography, and it's not like moki from the Glades could just randomly go there for the lulz. 2: the Luma Pools segment had a whole lot of moki. 3: the Luma pools expedition was such a disaster that who's even going to take the risk of trying to go up into the frozen wasteland?


	41. The Icebound Peaks

“Ori?”

“ _What?_ ” Ori snapped. He twisted away from the Skeeto as it dived for him, lashing out wildly with Spirit Edge. The blade hit _something_ , and the insect wobbled in the air as it wheeled around. It looked like a leg was missing, and maybe part of a wing, but he couldn’t keep looking at it or he’d end up skewered by one of the others. Four left… four left for now.

“Is there anything you’d like to tell me about?”

Ori’s response was a wordless snarl. He ducked away from another Skeeto, but his hooves slid out from under him on the ice. His muzzle slammed painfully into the unyielding, frozen surface of the pond. It felt like the skin on his nose  _ stuck _ as he got up. He shot an arrow at the most recent attacker, but the shot breezed over its head.  _ Stupid! _ He should have shot at the hive… it was high up out of reach, in a massive tree that was bowed under the weight of snow and ice and spikes and Decay. He had to destroy it, or the Skeetos would just keep coming, but the base of the trunk was icy, and the low branches were all lined with deadly icicles. The cliff face wasn’t any better – nothing but a frozen waterfall.

“No! Is there something you _have_ to ask me about? _Now?_ ” The one he’d hit before swooped in again. Ori swung with the hammer this time, smashing the corruption’s abdomen open and sending it tumbling to the ground in pieces, its wings still beating uselessly. Yellowish slime smeared across the ice, and Ori’s stomach turned. Seeing it struggling like that was an uncomfortable reminder of the trapped half-dead bugs in the Mouldwood Depths. He lunged again, slashing at it and hacking it into pieces, but the legs still kept twitching. He tore his eyes away, swallowing the rising nausea. At least the one good thing about the cold was he could barely smell anything. Something wet was dripping down his muzzle. He couldn’t tell if it was blood or if his nose was just running.

“You could have answered before instead of ignoring me and rushing into danger!” Voice replied testily. “Just leave the hive until later – if you don’t calm down and focus you’re going to get killed!”

“If you want me to _focus_ then stop distracting -” Ori was cut off by a gasp of shock after the blow drove the air from his lungs. “No...” He was dead. He was dead he was dead he was dead. The only way to get up to the nest was by jumping off the Skeetos. He’d done it before once or twice in the Depths, and there was a time in Nibel that he’d had to cross a valley by launching himself off of one flying Corruption after another, but he hadn’t exactly practiced much and the Skeetos moved so quickly, and it was hard enough to keep his balance on his ice and argue with Voice and – and he’d messed up, he’d taken his eyes off the one diving for him at just the wrong time, and the next thing he knew its skewer was buried under his ribs. In a panic he tried to push it away, then stab at it, but its frantically beating wings twisted the point in the wound, and somehow in the struggle it got wrenched back out. Blood poured onto the ice. Sickening waves of pain rippled out from the wound, and he collapsed onto all fours.

“Ori! No – I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to distract you!”

Ori struggled back to his feet. Putting pressure on the wound didn’t do much. His back and stomach both felt warmer than they should have in this cold. He had to heal it… he had to heal it… but there wasn’t time, not with the swarm still attacking him. “Just… let me...” He couldn’t spare the breath to talk. He had to destroy the hive, before the blood loss killed him. There! There was another of the bugs lining itself up. This time he focused entirely on it, and timed the reflection right, launching himself into the air. He kicked off the frozen waterfall into a second Skeeto, and a third, and… there wasn’t another in reach – he needed to use the feather, stay in the air… dash to the side… another jump… the nest came withing reach. He slashed at it with the Spirit Edge, tearing a massive gash through it, and another blow cut a huge portion of it away, but it was just too big… he had to find a handhold near it, but there wasn’t any. He tried to pull the feather out again, but the pain was too much, and his hand was slippery with blood.  _ No! _ He air-dashed and made it to a wall he could cling to. He could keep jumping in and out, hitting the nest and running, until it was destroyed. But he didn’t have that time. He already felt so weak…

Another mis-timed reflection. A Skeeto slammed into him, sending him spinning through the air. He steadied himself, but he couldn’t make it back to the tree trunk… not without throwing himself into the spikes on a branch. And if he fell… if he fell he knew he couldn’t climb back up.

He’d avoided using Lightspike on it because he didn’t want to waste the energy, but now it didn’t matter if he saved his strength to heal himself, not if he bled to death before he got a chance. An explosion of blue flame tore the nest to pieces, and fragments of paper and the smoldering remains of destroyed Skeetos rained down on the frozen pond. Ori fell among them. The last thing he remembered was the pain of smashing into the ice, and lying there gasping for air as his last heartbeats drove the blood from his body.

* * *

  
  


“Are you okay?” Voice asked.

“Yeah.” Ori watched the fog from his breath rise into the air. Not for the first time, he wished the Soul Link’s flame gave off actual warmth.

“I’m sorry I distracted you.”

“It’s okay.” He took a deep breath, held it as long as he could, and let it out as a shuddering sigh. It wasn’t okay. He wasn’t okay. “What were you going to...”

“Ori, I’m worried about this…  _ hatred _ you seem to have for Baur. You seem to have more anger for him than you have for  _ Shriek _ .”

“I don’t hate him.”

“Then why are you acting like this? First in the cave… I know you said you were joking about attacking him, but you didn’t sound like you were. And… that’s not like you, Ori. I know that’s not like you.”

“I...” Ori gulped. “I don’t know. I just...” He kicked idly at a snowdrift. “It’s just so – it’s so unfair! Why’s it fair that  _ he’s _ still alive?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean – I mean Kwolok was – he was fighting, and – and holding back the Decay the whole time! And he went to help find the Wisp, and he… he  _ died _ because of it, because he was… he was actually trying to help Niwen – and all the moki have been fighting to just stay alive, and… all he’s been doing all this time is – is  _ sleeping! _ ” He hacked at a low branch that he could probably have ducked under and walked around, shaking loose a whole storm’s worth of snow onto his head. He shook himself off, hissing in annoyance. “Why aren’t  _ you _ angry? You want to save Niwen more than anything, don’t you?”

“I do, but...”

“And he’s supposed to be a guardian like Kwolok was, and he just… doesn’t  _ care! _ ”

“I’m frustrated Baur wasn’t more… helpful too, Ori,” she said. “But he  _ did _ fight to hold off the Decay for a long, long time. I don’t know what made him stop, what made him give up, but… well, Kwolok often spoke fondly of Baur’s courage, and his wisdom and patience. But he never mentioned those scars, or how he got them. Something may have… happened. Just like Mora’s mind was corrupted, and Kwolok’s… Kwolok’s could have been taken away, Baur could have lost the strength to hold off the Decay, or his will to. I suppose that’s another mystery the Memory of the Forest could solve...”

Where Baur had disappointed Ori, Lupo’s map came through. The cartographer had already been through a part of Baur’s Reach more than half a month ago, when he returned to Niwen before the storm. He hadn’t explored most of the vast region of snowbound mountains, and he couldn’t say much about the safe paths or the dangers most of the area held, but just showing  _ what _ mountains there were gave Ori an idea of where he might find the wisp: the highest, iciest peaks where the enormous bear couldn’t have reached and where the snow might have buried the wisp from the sight of birds like Tokk.

_ Getting _ there was another matter. The maze of frozen valleys and ridges, gorges and peaks, was just as inhospitable as the Windswept Wastes had been. Up here, last night’s rain had fallen as snow, and probably so had all the rain for many years. In places the biting wind had scoured it away down to the ground, but in others deep drifts had been compacted and melted and refrozen just enough to turn them into walls of smooth, billowing ice that was too slick and steep to get any purchase on even with the help of the spirit shard. The trees were mostly conifers – at least, the surviving ones. There were plenty of bare trunks stripped of branches by the weight of the snow, and others were reduced to splinters by some enormous force.

But all around there were the signs of the life this desolate place had once hosted. Tuley and Veral’s people had lived here, and so had Grom’s. There were signposts – often built high into trees to stay above the winter snow – and fences, and broken-down old watermills, and huts and buildings of wood and stone with their roofs mostly collapsed. The only thing s that had actually endured the cold were the lanterns and the cauldrons.

According to Lupo’s notes, the ancient network of stone lanterns that ran throughout the mountains was so old that no one really knew who had originally built it, but the Gorleks had at least maintained and expanded it. The structures were all connected underground, and broken into many groups controlled by a single master lantern. Lupo had devoted a great deal of effort to showing how they were all linked together, and explaining that they were supposed to warm the land within their boundaries to protect crops from late frosts, but he’d left it up to guesswork how to actually light them.

At least, how Ori could light them. It was obvious that the cauldrons of liquid fire, warmed by flames from within the ground itself, were related. There was one close to the first Master Lantern he found, and it had melted a circle of almost bare ground around it, but he didn’t exactly have a container for the stuff. Lighting a branch on fire as a torch was useless. It wasn’t  _ just _ fire. It was… like the superheated stones in the Gumon City, or like the cauldron was a miniature Element of Warmth. The Light radiating from it was so similar that Ori wondered if Niwen  _ had _ had its own elemental hearts once. When he finally figured out how to get the cauldron to boil over in a fountain of blazing globs of  energy that he could reflect into the lantern, it shone with a power that could overcome the chill of winter. The power of a Spirit Tree.

No… it wasn’t  _ really _ winter, was it? Ori shook his head, dislodging a few snowflakes. The sun was weak behind gray clouds, as it had been for most of the day. Back home… the Valley of the Wind near the Forlorn Ruins was so lush and green. He’d seen it from Ku’s back… but then again, that was so long ago. How long had it even been? Half a month? It was getting close to the new moon, just a sliver of light in the sky before dawn came. Maybe snow had come to Nibel’s mountains too.

It felt like it had been months since he saw the pond where he’d dived into the near-freezing waters to evade Kuro. Now, Ori edged cautiously over the thin ice of a slow place in a river, hoping it wouldn’t give way under him. The lanterns had cleared some of the glazing of ice away from the trees, but Ori wished they hadn’t freed the frozen streams. No matter how slick ice was, it was better than cold water. And the power had its own dangers, too. Not  _ all _ of the lanterns had survived the cold. When he lit the second Master Lantern there was a noise like a thunderclap and a great plume of flame rose into the air, accompanied by a shower of chunks of stone Ori was glad he was too far away to appreciate the size of.

And there’d been… other things released by the thaw as well. The cold must have been too much even for most corruptions, because there were hundreds of them entombed in the ice and snow. Things Ori called fisher slugs dangled their sticky tongues like lures and tried to reel him in if he climbed them, and others masquerading as rocks or plants tried to swallow him whole. There were occasional Skeetos, and icy Mortar Warms on the cliffs – though those were often more of a help than a hindrance.

But that wasn’t the worst part. Ori had been mentally comparing this place to the horrors of Mount Forlorn… but at least there, the frozen corpses had stayed in one place. Not here. Here, the Gorleks wandered the icy wasteland. Their skin was dry and cracked from the cold, their manes were frozen into masses of snow and ice, and there was no fog from their breath. But still they lurched towards him, still they attacked with the same brutality and rudimentary cunning as the ones he’d encountered in the Wellspring.

Ori winced as the ice creaked under the gorlek’s feet. It was too heavy. He was worried about the ice holding  _ him _ , let alone the much larger creature. The gorlek showed no fear of the danger. It had adjusted how it moved its feet to avoid slipping, which was more than the true corruptions did, but it still marched unflinchingly across the ice with its hammer held ready. Ori shuffled back away from it, but hesitated to form his own weapon. He’d always felt bad about killing them, but after the Mouldwood Depths… now that he  _ knew _ that natural creatures could be corrupted by the Decay, but its hold could be broken, he  _ couldn’t _ . Could they be saved? Mora had. The spiderlings had. Ori was  _ sure _ Kwolok could have been, and Turran.

He’d done his best to avoid them so far, only harming the ones that had tried to destroy the lanterns out of necessity. He hadn’t killed them - he’d lead them away down a slope, and cut the muscles and sinew in their legs – but even that made his stomach churn. It was too much like Ku’s injuries. This one, there wasn’t a slope, just the stream between it and the nearest lantern. He’d hoped it wouldn’t even try to cross the ice. But if it did… he was going to have to fight it. He couldn’t let it get across, but if the ice broke… Ori had never seen a corruption that wasn’t meant for the water swim.

Ori leaped over the Gorlek’s head as it approached, but it made a grab for him and he had to jump back. He almost lost his balance when he landed, and he spent long enough trying to steady himself that the creature took a swing at him with its massive pickaxe, bringing it down with all its strength. Cracks spiderwebbed the ice. Ori tried again, leaping off to the side. It was too slippery, he had to just jump and use Dash in the air. He almost had a shot at its leg, but as he skidded backwards while trying to make the cut he ended up flat on his face. There was a thin layer of water on the ice.

Another blow from the hammer fell. Ori narrowly avoided it, but it punched through the ice. Water gushed onto the surface. This was insane… it was going to fall through, and maybe take him with it as well. If he just ran, and hit it with arrows or even Lightspike, it would kill the gorlek, but he’d be safe. Ori darted out of reach again. He just had to hit it… the spear appeared in his hand, making his whole arm tingle. But the mental image of the weapon burying itself in Kwolok’s body, of water red with blood, stopped his throw. His legs felt weak. No – he could throw it at the ground under it, it would break the ice, and… it wasn’t any different. It wasn’t any different. He turned and let the spear fly far from its original target, and strike the other bank. Snow and frozen earth flew thr ough  the air.

He couldn’t do it. Ori dashed back in and swiped at the Gorleg’s shin. One, two, three blows before it stumbled and fell. Somehow, the ice held, and it rose again, its beard dripping. But when the hammer fell, it was too much. The ice shattered in a wide circle around them. Ori was ready for the strike that would cripple its other leg, when the gorlek plunged through the ice, and its weight upended the slab he was standing on.

The water that closed over Ori’s head was so bitterly, brutally cold that by the time Ori even remembered how to swim, the weak current had pulled him under solid ice. It felt like getting stabbed through the heart with an icicle – or at least, what getting stabbed through the heart with an icicle should have felt like. It didn’t actually feel that much colder than being stabbed with anything else. The chill tore through his already-damp fur… and something closed around his tail. The gorlek! It grabbed him, it pulled him down, battering him with fists like stone. Flash eventually broke Ori free, and he rocketed towards the surface with the Swim Dash. It punched through the ice above him, and he dragged himself to the shore, coughing and choking and shivering so violently he was afraid he’d bite his own tongue if he tried to speak.

Ori had felt cold like this before. He’d survived it… it didn’t seem possible, but he’d survived it… how? He’d… gotten away from it, hadn’t he? After Kuro’s attack, he’d been close to just giving up and letting his life ebb away, but Sein had given him the strength to leave the frozen hell around the base of Mount Forlorn.

Here, there was nowhere to leave  _ to. _ The lantern gave off warmth, but the wind was picking up now. It tore through his soaked fur, biting and stinging. He had to get out of the open, out of this valley. He set the Soul Link near the lantern and healed whatever injuries the gorlek had caused, but the power wouldn’t heal the seeping cold.

It was always such hard work moving through the snow – sometimes he could walk on the top crust, but if it was powder his hooves just sank in. And it was even harder now. With every step, Ori got colder and more exhausted. His paws and ears and antennae and nose were completely numb.

“Ori?” Voice called. “You have to get moving again – if you’re cold, you won’t get any warmer lying in the snow.”

“Ihknow...” Ori mumbled, but he just curled up tighter. Everything was so, so cold… this hollow behind a tree stump wasn’t really a _proper_ shelter, but the ridge was so far, and he was so tired… “I’m just… resting a… bit...” He just wanted to sleep. He didn’t want to waste more time sleeping, but… he needed to. If he wanted to get to shelter, he needed sleep… Voice was always saying he needed to sleep more. What was she complaining about? This wasn’t that… bad… it was cold, but… he wasn’t shivering anymore… “Wake me up when...”

He didn’t remember how he finished the sentence. Or if he’d finished it at all.

* * *

  
  


“You know, _technically_ I did rest a bit and I’m fine now,” Ori struggled to keep his voice above a snarl. What right did she have to be angry at him?

“Ori, this isn’t funny!” Voice scolded. “You know you just… you were acting strange and then you _stopped_ moving, and… and _died!_ ”

“So?” Ori kept his back pressed against the warm stone of the lantern. He’d come back still half-frozen, but at least he was dry, and his head was clear enough to think to realize that he was better off huddling against the heat source until he stopped shivering. That was taking an annoyingly long time. “How is me dying surprising anymore?”

“Oh, it isn’t… especially not with the way you’ve been acting… but this was different! Do you know how long I was waiting there, watching you just… _not breathing_ , and nothing happened? I was afraid something had… gone wrong, and it didn’t work!”

“I’m not that lucky...”

“ _What?_ ” The shock in her voice was almost painful.

“Half the afternoon?” Ori hurriedly changed the subject, glancing at the sun. He doubted it was anywhere near that, it didn’t look much later.

“Did you just say you _wanted_ to die? I mean… permanently?”

“...no.” Ori hesitated.

“Ori...”

“Never _mind!_ ” Ori snapped. “Never mind, it – it doesn’t matter! Let’s just go!” He still felt cold, but in this weather he was going to no matter what. He stomped away from the lantern, and scrambled up a tree to clear an icy drift. “You’re right, I wasted enough time on that stupid...”

“You’re not changing the subject this time.” Voice bobbed along beside him. As usual. “Ori, I’m worried about you – I’m genuinely worried -”

“Then stop.”

“What?”

“Just stop worrying about me.”

“How am I supposed to not worry when you’re just… you’re angry at everything, you’re throwing your own life away like it doesn’t even matter -”

Ori took a deep breath before answering, but it didn’t help. “Stop acting like it  _ does _ . Why don’t you just – why don’t you just block it out, like you did with Kwolok, and – and stop caring!”

“I’m not going to -” Voice cut herself off. She was obviously having to restrain herself to keep from shouting. “Ori, have you considered that you’re all I have left?”

That hurt. That hurt so much, because of how many times Sein had said something similar. But Ori pushed the pain and the guilt away – threw it away, like using Reem’s power to kick it away and himself forward. Of course it made him feel guilty, why shouldn’t it when everything he did, everything he  _ was _ , was wrong.

“And right now, I’m stuck with you, and you with me,” she continued. “I just -”

“I didn’t say I wanted to just… to fail!” Ori said defensively. “I’m not giving up. I’m not giving up, _ever._ I’m...” It was hard talking and running and jumping through all this snow at the same time. “I’m going to save Ku no matter what. Even if it… even if it costs me my life. And I’ll put you back together, but… just stop caring about _me!_ ”

“Ori, that’s not how I meant that… I… Look, we’re stuck with each other whether you like it or not. And whether you like it or not, I _do_ care about you and it hurts _me_ to see you in – in pain all the time!”

“Sorry.” Ori’s response was halfhearted. He’d _tried_ to make it sound sincere, but he could tell as soon as he heard himself that it didn’t sound that way. “You’d be better off if you didn’t.”

“If I’d be better off not caring about you, then you’d be better off...” She trailed off.

“Better off what?”

“Never mind.”

“Better off _what?_ ” Ori repeated.

“I was going to say you’d be better off in the same way if you didn’t care about Kwolok, or – or even if you didn’t care about _Ku_ ,” she said. Ori’s throat tightened. The cold vanished in a pulse of white-hot anger, but before he could say anything, she added: “I’m not saying you should, Ori – I mean I’m not saying you shouldn’t! That’s my point! I know what I said yesterday, or at least how you heard it, wasn’t… right, but… think about how you felt when I said that. How is this any different?”

“It’s -” Ori’s response died before it left his lips. He wanted to say the first reason, the first excuse, that popped into his mind, but none _did_. “I’m sorry...” this time the words came out right. He took a deep breath of the frigid air, wincing as the bitter cold pierced his throat. “I guess I… wasn’t thinking. I don’t know why it… you said it took longer to bring me back?”

“Yes. I suppose it did take longer after Shriek attacked you and Ku as well, but most of that time you were still breathing.”

“Maybe I just… wasn’t dead yet?” Ori suggested. “I don’t know. I… don’t think I ever actually froze to death before.”

“I suppose that’s possible,” she admitted with a sigh.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter...” Ori’s eyes narrowed as he reached the crest of the ridge and saw the form of another gorlek lumbering through the snow. “That’s _not_ going to happen again.”

  
  


This time, Ori didn’t hesitate. He didn’t care anymore. He didn’t care if there was anything left of the creatures they once were, if they could be saved. It didn’t matter because  _ he _ couldn’t save them. He couldn’t save anyone, or anything. All he could do was make things worse. And he  _ hated _ it. He hated the gorleks, he hated Baur, and – and he hated Kwolok for just being  _ okay _ with dying and not even being angry at Ori like he deserved, and most of all he hated himself. The anger was constantly burning and boiling inside him, and the only outlet was the lurching, shambling creatures in front of him.

For the first time, Ori struck without fear. Not for their safety, and not for his own either. He didn’t care anymore. The Spirit Edge didn’t cut that deeply into their cold-hardened flesh, but Ori struck again and again with savage, cruel strength. The blade still severed sinew, and destroyed eyes, and the hammer still shattered bones. But their axes did the same, and Ori was reckless, too reckless, until their blows found their mark. The Decayed felt no pain, but Ori was shocked back into the same familiar panic. Only for a moment, because that blow had already hurt him too badly to fight back. It didn’t matter. Death only made the pain go away for a little while, until the next time he made a mistake.

He’d been reckless and sloppy the last time. The next time, he was more careful, luring them onto ground where he could move without too much trouble, and they were still just as slow, just as predictable. He sent the rocks one threw at him back, breaking its jaw with the third hit. The hammer, and the diving stomp, smashed their meaty hands until the weapons fell out of them, and he just kept hitting, and cutting, and  _ burning _ until… he wasn’t sure he’d even stopped when they were dead.

Ori stood there, panting, ankle deep in bloody snow, trying not to be sick. A shaggy-furred face stared up at him with glassy, vacant eyes like the eyes of a dead fish. The body lay face down, a few feet away. Like Rall’s… too much like Rall’s. The group that attacked him were all dead. All torn apart. All just torn to pieces by all the anger and pain and hatred he’d poured into them.

Just like Shriek’s victims.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh wow, yeah, I guess this is actually the first time Ori’s ever actually died of hypothermia! I forgot that he hadn’t according to what I wrote in 100 Themes.  
> Anyway… oh my god things are not going well here. Writing this chapter had me looking back at the chapter when Ori was mentally at his worst point in 100 Themes of the Blind Forest, and realizing how much worse his emotional state has gotten even compared to that.
> 
> And yeah, Ori’s being a jerk to Voice at this point. This is something I’ve sometimes seen called the selfishness of depression or something like that, which is… not a term I really like. Technically it’s selfish, or at least self-centered, and unempathetic, and dismissive of other’s feelings… but, and I am basing this on personal experience, this is very different mentally from what’s generally referred to as selfishness. It’s the result of a deeply, DEEPLY fucked-up mindset where you believe you are worthless, that you are unworthy of love, and you become so convinced of this that you project those feelings onto others and start believing that everyone else hates you, or if they do love and care about you then they’re wrong and stupid for feeling that way and that they’d be better off if you just made them stop setting themselves up for disappointment. But a big part of what makes this so dangerous is that if someone points out that you’re hurting others, that you’re hurting them, by lashing out and pushing them away, that just reinforces those feelings of self-hatred further, because it just gets mentally filed away as more proof that you’re a bad, worthless person and everything you do is bad. It’s like a self-directed kafkatrap.


	42. The Messenger

By the time Ori saw Tokk standing in the snow next to a pine tree with numerous branches he could have perched on, he’d almost forgotten that he wasn’t the only one exploring the frozen mountains. His heart leaped, and he excitedly raced to the old bird, but Tokk didn’t notice him until he was right beside him.

“Squork!” Startled, Tokk hopped into the air, beating his wings. “Oh, it’s you.” He immediately turned his attention back to the mountains up ahead. He seemed tense, distracted, tilting his head from side to side.

“What’s going on?”

“Ssh!” Tokk held up a wing. “I’d keep my head down if I were you!”

Ori was about to ask why when a familiar, fur-raising screech echoed across the distant peaks. Ori’s head whipped from side to side.  _ Shriek. _ Where was the sound coming from? He couldn’t hear – he followed Tokk’s advice and ducked, pressing his body into the snow as much as he could. Sure enough, the shadow in the sky emerged from behind a ridge and soared across the valley, flapping and rolling from side to side unsteadily. Only when the owl had passed them by did either of them dare to breathe a word or move a muscle.

“Phew!” Tokk shifted his weight from foot to foot, wincing. His leg was still bandaged. “If it’s not Rotgulls, it’s _her._ ”

“What’s she doing here?” Even though Shriek was far away now, Ori kept his voice as low as could be herd.

“Hunting, I’d guess. She comes up here from time to time, but I’m not sure she’s after her usual prey, if you know what I mean. Was it you who’s been lighting those lanterns?” Tokk asked. 

“Yeah.”

“Well, you should be careful with them. I landed by one to warm my feet up for a while – this cold’s brutal on them – when she came out of the sky like a thunderbolt. I thought she’d seen me and – well, that’d be it – but she went for the lantern instead, smashed it to pieces. Way too close for comfort.”

“Oh.” Ori swallowed hard. He hadn’t known… he’d put the Soul Link right next to the lanterns, several times. It must have only been luck that she hadn’t discovered it.

“Still… she’s almost _majestic_ , when viewed from a safe distance, isn’t she?” Tokk remarked dryly.

“Not… really...” Ori winced. Even from that far away, it was like she left a trail of shadows behind her, and he could _feel_ her hostility biting into him. “It’s more like… staring at the sun.”

“Hmm… never heard her compared to the sun before, but I see what you mean.”

There was another scream. It sounded more distant now, but Ori still looked frantically around anyway. He edged away from Tokk. “Maybe you shouldn’t… shouldn’t be near me,” he said, remember what had happened to Rall. “If she sees me -”

“Relax, kid, she can’t see _everything._ Especially in this place. It’s a good thing you blend in with this snow, hmm?”

“Uh… I guess so -”

“During the day, maybe,” said Voice. “During the night is a different story. We should find shelter before sundown.”

“Hmm… You won’t have to worry about getting seen by her _tonight,_ ” Tokk said.

“Huh? Why not?”

“There’s a storm comin’, and by the look of these clouds it’ll be a bad one. Not even _she_ can fly in a blizzard! It’s a miracle she can fly at all with those wings, especially in the thin air up here! Although Tuley thinks she _can’t_ fly, it’s just that even the ground’s afraid of her!” He chuckled. “But I suppose you’ll have to find shelter one way or another – I was about to make for the Glades myself once the coast is clear.”

“Oh.” Ori’s heart sank. It was weird – he was scared of what Shriek might do to Tokk – what _he_ might do to someone – but now that he’d seen another creature in this desolate place… it was like a brief shelter from the storm of anger and fear and frustration. He didn’t care how many times he died, he just wanted to get it all over with as fast as he possibly could, and he hated the idea of having to hide in a cave all night. But part of him liked having the company.

Tokk looked at him sympathetically. “Sorry, kid – I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging about being able to fly. I’d carry you down with me if I could, but I’m not as strong as an owlet. Uhh… I suppose a Spirit Well’d let you go back and forth, wouldn’t it?”

“It’s not that, it’s… never mind,” Ori said. “I can’t get to the Spirit Well anyway.” There was one marked on the map – in a cave that shouldn’t have even been that far away from where he was now – but the cave entrance seemed to be behind a waterfall that had frozen into a massive block of ice. “I’ll be fine...” he sighed.

Tokk tilted his head skeptically. “Be careful. The storms in these mountains aren’t like anything you’ve ever seen. Cold enough if you stick your tongue out you’ll be able to chew the frost on it, and the wind blowing the snow against your face’ll strip your feathers off. Or fur.”

“I know,” Ori said. “I’ve been in… places like this before.” The Forlorn Ruins were at least this bad, and Mount Horu in winter hadn’t been pleasant either, but at least that night it hadn’t been this windy. “You were looking for the wisp too, right?”

“Yeah. Thought I’d have a poke around, see how things’ve changed for myself. I gathered a few herbs Veral asked me for this morning too.”

“Did you… find anything?”

The old bird hook his head. “I’m sorry, kid. I gave it a try, but these peaks’ve been searched from the sky before. My guess is the wisp’s buried deep in the snow somewhere, and if that’s the case it’s not likely I or any bird’ll find i t. I wish there was something more I could do to help. I know it isn’t fair that you’ve got to do this all by yourself...”

“It’s okay.” Ori took a deep breath. It wasn’t fair. But it was never fair. And it had to be this way. No one else was dying looking for the wisps. _No one._ “It’s… better than the spiders.”

Tokk shivered, shaking a faint dusting of windblown snow from his wings. “That’s not a high standard.” He groaned, and stretched his wings. “Bah. If it gets any colder my bones’ll turn to icicles. Anyway, I’d better get in the air before the storm comes. I have to… deliver the bad news about Kwolok.” He sighed. “And everyone else that didn’t make it. With how many are wounded I doubt the others’ll make it back to the Glades tonight, let alone the Hollow. I suppose I’ll be letting the families of the ones that  _ are  _ all right know, though.”

“Yeah...” Ori hung his head. How many moki would Tokk have to tell about the deaths of family members? But then, something in his brain _clicked_ , like the last keystone slipping into its slot in a Spirit Gate. “Hey – wait!” He said excitedly. “Don’t go yet, I just thought of – you can _fly!_ ”

Tokk gave him an odd look. “Took you long enough to notice,” he said, his eyes crinkling into a sarcastic smile.

“That’s very perceptive of you, Ori,” Voice added.

“No! I mean – you could take a message back to Nibel! And – and tell Naru and Gumo we’re okay! Or… not okay, but...” Ori’s ears flattened again. “Or what’s happened to us. That we’re alive.”

“Hmm… I might, if I knew where Nibel _was_ ,” Tokk answered cautiously. “But since I have no idea, I’m assuming it’s nowhere easy to get to. Uhh… you said it was someplace across the sea to the South, didn’t you?”

Ori nodded.

“How far?”

“I don’t know. It took us all day to get here, but the wind was blowing us towards here… but we got turned around and lost for a while and went the wrong way, so… I don’t know. There were geese flying the same way, and they made it, though.”

Tokk furrowed his brow. “I don’t know, kid… a day’s flight’s a long way. It’s been years since I’ve had to go that far in a day, especially not over ocean with nowhere to land. And I’m not getting any younger, either...”

Ori’s heart sank. That one moment, that glimmer of hope… but Tokk was right, he couldn’t ask him to do anything that dangerous…

“I’ve heard there’s a chain of islands off to the West a ways that crosses the Southern sea… never been that way myself… been a few years since I’ve seen new lands for the first time though, too.” Tokk seemed to be thinking aloud, not talking to Ori. “I might be able to go that way, but it’d take longer. And there’s a lot of storms this time of year, so it all depends on the weather.”

“I understand,” said Ori. He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice. If only there was another way…

“It doesn’t sound like you can draw me much of a map,” Tokk said. “How’ll I know where this ‘Nibel’ is? Sounds like the islands must be far west of the way you flew, so I’d have to follow the coast...”

“Huh? I guess just… the way we found this place by accident. The Spirit Tree – and the Ginso tree, but the Spirit Tree’s light might be easier to see… wait – can you tell him where I am too? And Sein? And the other spirits?”

Tokk’s eyes widened slightly. “The Spirit Tree...” he said softly, as if testing how the words felt on his tongue. “That’s right… he’s a tree like the Spirit Willow used to be, right?”

“Yeah!” Ori nodded.

“I’ve always wanted to know what the Willow looked like with light inside. I heard she was like nothing else in nature…”

That was when Ori realized how he could make the journey sound more appealing to Tokk. He felt terrible about doing it, because it would still be hard and dangerous, but… the more he thought about it, the more he thought it sounded like Tokk really would want to go. “The Spirit Tree’s… beautiful,” he said. “And… he’s old, older than… I guess not the mountains, and Naru’s older than him, but everything else. And Nibel’s… I guess it’s a bit like Niwen was before the Decay! Except… it’s after the Decay… things aren’t like they were, but...”

“All right, all right kid, now you’re sounding like you’re trying to bribe me!” Tokk laughed and waved the back of a wing at him. “Have to admit it’d be a sight to see a living spirit tree… living spirits – more than one, at least. And I wouldn’t mind having a chat with someone whose memory goes back that far...” He smiled. “Well, now I sound like some sort of mercenary, but I’ll give the flight a try tomorrow, if the weather’s fair. Speaking of the weather, I’d better be off.” He beat his wings a few times, sending powdery snow flying everywhere. “I guess I might not see you for a while, so… good luck, kid. Here’s hoping by the time I get back Ku’ll be ready to fly home with the _good_ news, hmm?”

“Yeah.” Worries and regrets raced through Ori’s mind. What if there was another storm? What if Tokk really wasn’t strong enough to make the journey? What if… he didn’t know what else could go wrong, but… “Good… good luck to you too.”

“Thanks,” Tokk said warmly. A gust of wind almost made him stumble back. “Whew! Glad Shriek left when she did, or I might’ve been stuck here all night too… oh, that reminds me. One more thing: unless you already have a cave in mind, Tuley’s old hut’s not too far down that valley there. Assuming the roof hasn’t caved in it’s as good a shelter as any. If you can get there from here… I’ve never tried going on foot. Anyway, you can’t miss it, it’s just across the gorge from the Ancestral Tree!”

“Ancestral Tree?” Ori asked, but Tokk was already in the air, making slow progress upwind and swaying from side to side as it buffeted him. It brought back the uncomfortable memory of Ku fighting to stay in control as they were pulled up into the storm. No, it would be fine. Tokk would be fine.

Ori guessed it was a welcome change knowing about the Ancestral Tree  _ before _ he got to it. Lupo had even marked it, and the hut, on the map as a landmark. The hut was symbolized by a tiny, simplified sketch of a smiling bucktoothed face. The tree’s symbol was an odd, curving shape with rays of light coming out of it.

He wasn’t sure if he’d  _ ever _ actually known where an Ancestral Tree was before he reached it. It seemed like Niwen’s residents knew about a lot of them, and it wasn’t the first time Ori had noticed one on Lupo’s maps, it was just that normally he found the tree before he had a map. And in Nibel, Sein hadn’t known the locations where the spirits fell.

This time, he knew about it, but he almost didn’t find it. It was close to sunset now, but that was just a glow in the sky somewhere. The last holes in the clouds were closing up, and fat snowflakes the size of downseeds rained from the sky. It was strange, it normally wasn’t that cold when snow like this fell, but the temperature kept dropping. Maybe it was just the wind, but the storm didn’t seem  _ natural. _ But he guessed it wasn’t, not any more than the chill in the Forlorn Ruins had been. All summer this land had never thawed.

But the land the spirit of the ancestral tree showed him was so different! It wasn’t warm, exactly, but the sun shown with the same intensity as in the desert, down on forests of tall firs humming with birdsong and grassy meadows teeming with flowers. In the summer, it was beautiful. In the winter… it had a harsh, star k beauty, but it didn’t seem exactly pleasant. The Willow’s light already seemed weak, way off in the distance. It seemed this spirit didn’t develop the power he was showing Ori until late in his life. It seemed a lot like Sol’s Light Burst when he’d perfected it, but he’d started from the other direction. 

Sol’s power had come from making a focusing orb to control her Spirit Flame, then making it solid and throwing it, and then she’d figured out how to make it explode. Ori wished he could have remembered  _ that _ trick much earlier. He guessed he’d forgotten because he could use it with Sein’s help anyway, and he wasn’t worried when he couldn’t use it by himself at first because she’d said he was too young.

But this spirit was obsessed with fire from the start. He learned from another how to produce a burst of flame around his body that could set corruptions ablaze, but he kept adapting the technique until he could hold flames in the palm of his hand. He made the fire more powerful, feeding it more and more Light, until it could be thrown and explode in an orange fireball.

Ori wasn’t exactly surprised when the spirit ended up dying in a forest fire, but he  _ was _ a bit surprised that he didn’t seem to have been responsible for starting it. He didn’t care what was, he just wanted the memory to be  _ over _ . He didn’t want to relive stumbling through burning trees, choking on smoke and his whole body overheated.

  
  


When he returned to his body, the fire was replaced by the exact opposite. He hadn’t realized how much the cold  _ hurt _ because he’d gotten used to the numbness and the shivering. The storm was getting worse. He had to reach Tuley’s hut. He found the chasm all right – he’d almost stumbled over the edge – but he could barely see the other side through the snow. It was hard to tell how far away it was, but it seemed too far to jump or glide, unless he got lucky with the wind.

Unless… Ori held out his hand in front of him and focused. Fire warmed his numb fingers, but that only made them hurt more. He gritted his teeth and put more power into it, making it burn brighter. This was taking a lot of energy… if this worked he could only test it once, he couldn’t afford to tire himself out trying to practice it. He took a few steps back and launched the fireball he’d decided to call Flame Burst almost straight up, then ran to catch it. It seemed… heavy enough, if that was the right word, like the balls of false-light some corruptions shot. Like Light Burst. He leaped, and sprang off it, sending the ball down into the snow where it sizzled and exploded.

That took a lot of power, though, way more than Light Burst ever had, and try as he might, Ori couldn’t figure out how to make  _ Sol’s _ power work from what he’d learned from the tree. It was infuriating. It seemed like Sol had created the power in similar circumstances – a forest where Decay’s power hung heavy in the air – but the memories of her ancestral tree were too hazy, and he wasn’t sure what she’d done that he wasn’t  trying . Flame Burst would have to work, but his suspicions were confirmed that if he didn’t let it charge it was too light to jump off of, and  charging it took so long that there was no way he could use it in midair: he’d have to let go of the feather and plummet out of the sky. One extra jump had to get him across.

It had to, but it didn’t. It seemed like it might have, but a gust of wind in his face had other ideas. Instead, Ori found himself struggling to control his gliding descent down into the deep canyon, steering himself away from the spike and icicle lined walls, the top getting farther and farther away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it really did take two entire weeks for Ori to seriously consider the possibility that Tokk, who happens to be a bird, could fly back to Nibel to tell Naru and Gumo what happened. Ori kind of has a tendency to just… not think of asking an adult for help, because in the events of Blind Forest he couldn’t. And while I think Tokk would probably have been willing to try after Shriek’s attack on Ku, it’s only now, as Tokk’s character has developed and he’s opened up to Ori more and shown that he’s not just out for himself, that Ori thought he might be willing to.


End file.
